YOUR homework mission this week, should you choose to accept it, is to watch Blood Money: the Curse of the Brink’s-Mat Robbery (Channel 5, Tuesday, 10pm).
Not only will this 90-minute documentary prepare you nicely for the BBC’s upcoming all-star drama The Gold, it’s a pukka watch in its own right, featuring several key witnesses speaking on camera for the first time.
Hold on, though. All-star, pukka, revealing new interviews? Should a real armed robbery in which security guards were doused in petrol and threatened with guns ever be considered the stuff of entertainment?
It depends how it is done. Previews are not yet available for The Gold, starring Royal Conservatoire of Scotland graduate Jack Lowden, Hugh Bonneville and Dominic Cooper, so I cannot vouch for the approach it will take.
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But no-one leaving Channel 5’s Blood Money could do so with the notion that crime is glamorous. In the case of Brink's-Mat, so many lives were lost and ruined.
That is evident from the off as one of the security guards, Mike Scouse, talks us calmly through the events of 26 November, 1983. He and another guard were hooded, handcuffed, and “got a bit of a kicking”. The gang knew exactly what they were doing, he says, and they made sure to tell the guards that they knew where they lived. “It’s a day I’ll never forget,” says Mr Scouse.
The gang made off with three tonnes of pure gold with an estimated value of £26 million. It was, crowed the media, "the crime of the century”.
Yet it is now accepted that the robbers were after cash when they burst into the security depot near Heathrow. They stumbled across the gold when they could not get in to the main vault. While it might have looked as though they had won the jackpot, it was to prove difficult and risky to convert the gold bars into folding cash.
It was among the first signs that the “crime of the century” would leave a long trail of trouble in its wake, leading some to consider the gold “cursed”.
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With a team of talking heads that includes criminologists and crime reporters, Blood Money will bring back memories for those who were around at the time (those mug shots, those names). It will also introduce a new generation to a robbery that changed many people’s view of criminals. Robin Hood they were not.
If you saw the recent Trailblazers, which retraced the steps of intrepid Victorian explorer Isabella Bird, you will be familiar with the actor and comedian who presents Emily Atack: Asking for It? (BBC2, Tuesday, 9pm).
Though played for laughs, Trailblazers also functioned as a sort of feminist guide to coming of age, with each woman talking about their lives and experiences. One of the subjects Atack touched upon, the rampant misogyny on social media, is explored here from a personal point of view. This is an introduction to Atack’s social media world, and little wonder it upsets her profoundly.
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So why not just switch the phone off? It’s not that simple, says Atack. “I’m nervous about going public about this because I put bikini photos on Instagram, I talk about sex in my shows, and I’m very cheeky and flirty. There will be people saying, ‘But you ask for this negative attention, what do you expect?’ You do sit there and go, 'Is this my fault, is it something I’m putting out there?'”
Her search for answers takes in a heart-to-heart with her parents and focus groups of young men and women.
The scum who plague her with their comments turn out to be cowards as well, with not one taking up the offer to explain themselves.
This is a tough but essential watch that parents and teens perhaps should watch together but won’t (some of the language is very post-watershed). Be warned though: after viewing this you might feel like setting the minimum age for buying a phone at, ooh, 56?
I can’t be the only one who thinks the title of a new six-part series, World’s Most Secret Hotels (Channel 4, Sunday, 6.45pm), is a bit of a headscratcher. After all, if you go to the trouble of being secret and exclusive, why invite the cameras in? It’s a marketing strategy that’s too rich for me. much like some of the hotels featured. But a traveller can dream.
I liked the look of the hotel in Cambodia where guests live in luxurious raised tents. There are no signs, so you have to take a three-hour escorted drive from Phnom Penh. On arrival, guests are asked to ride a zip wire down to reception.
The Burgh Island Hotel in Devon, an art deco wonder on its own tidal island, looks more my speed. Any spot that meets with the approval of Agatha Christie is good enough for me.
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