Summary
More elderly aches and pains mean more dilemmas for the crew, who’re forced to continue the job without their erstwhile leader.
Anyone with a fondness for elderly bickering will have had a wonderful time with Hatton Garden episode 2, which was virtually nothing but. Then again the claustrophobic can’t have had a good time, as the robbers continued with the next phase of their plan, which involved wriggling through a very small hole. No wonder Timothy Spall lost all that weight!
As it turns out, weight was the least of Tim’s problems, since his character, the wizened wide boy Terry Perkins, had such a sudden drop in blood pressure that he almost fell into a coma. All this after effectively taking charge of the crew after a bit of a falling out with their erstwhile leader Brian Reader (Kenneth Cranham), who wanted to give it up as a bad idea. (Spoiler alert for anyone who doesn’t follow the news: It was.)
Thing is, though, you’ve got to admire the audacity of this mob, and that’s probably what writer Jeff Pope was relying on. Given the increasingly absurd sensitivity of our current media climate, it shouldn’t come as much as a surprise that people online are complaining that the show is “glorifying” these career criminals, but if Hatton Garden episode 2 is what glorification looks like, I’d certainly like to see what a condemnation would be. The only thing to admire about any of these men is their tenacity, and even that is rooted in desperation and stupidity.
There’s no glory here. John “Kenny” Collins (Alex Norton), the apparently narcoleptic lookout, is only good for packing a lunch. Everyone else needs a p**s or an insulin injection or a break. The whole thing’s a mess, the plan’s a shambles, and everyone involved seems thicker than the door of the vault. But it’s funny, and it’s well-acted, and the needling exchanges are well-written, and incredibly it’s true, so that alone should warrant some cursory interest. Might as well enjoy it for what it is.
