The Last Panthers

In a tense opening scene, a well-executed diamond heist is underway.  Disregarding the alarm they know will be pressed, the gang pour pink paint over the manager with the combination to the safe (Pink Panthers!) and make it out in the allotted time.  Instead of the usual foot-to-the-floor getaway car, they pound the pavements, having hamstrung the police vehicles with a ring of fire.  Then things start to go a bit wrong, for the gang and for the drama.

It takes them an age to discard their conspicuous white boiler suits, leading one of them to accidentally shoot a child while aiming fire at police.  He then rather unbelievably escapes across a piece of open ground, when a few seconds earlier several policemen, presumably armed since they are in Marseilles, were in hot pursuit.  Though the gang evade capture, their buyer/fence doesn't want to be implicated in a murder and they are forced to try to sell the goods elsewhere.  This turns out to be somewhere in the vicinity of Belgrade, in a shanty town that even hardened criminals would probably eschew in favour of a prison cell.  That they make it out of here alive is thanks to Milan (Goran Bogdan) who has a panther tattooed on his chest, a man who used to be known as 'Animal' and who is about to find that criminal fraternity is a myth.

While this is going on, diamond heist specialist Naomi (Samantha Morton) and her insurance boss Tom who, as played by John Hurt, is surely well past retirement, arrive to check out the scene of the crime and trace the diamonds, quickly clashing with the irritated cops, led by Khalil (Tahar Rahim) who are themselves investigating.  Tom and Naomi soon follow the trail to Belgrade, which is the cue for her flashbacks to the Balkans conflict in what are very cliched and badly-done CGI clips of her in uniform.  By the end of the episode, she too has only narrowly escaped with her life.

We differed in opinion a bit on this one, with Dan liking it more than Ali, but then he is more of a fan of those violent 1970s French heist thrillers, and more recent ones like 'A Prophet'.  This owes something to them, and thankfully uses subtitles rather than English actors speaking in accents, but the tone is somewhat uneven, and whether there is action enough for all the episodes without spilling over into total implausibility, we shall have to wait and see.  Plus, it must be said, we have nothing against beards per se, but one hirsute man is rather too much like another to immediately identify our cops and robbers, so a shave or two wouldn't go amiss.