Press clippings Page 2
I wasn't expecting riveting edge-of-the-seat stuff, which is just as well as right from the slightly old fashioned title sequence I knew this wasn't going to reel me in.
The whole thing felt very old fashioned and slightly overacted, mainly by Head who seemed to have attended the Waking the Dead school of shouting as he brooded through each scene waiting for just the right time to bellow. Jenny Agutter was boring, and I didn't care for Warren Clarke, leaving it to Dean Lennox Kelly to emerge as the best of the cast but he didn't get much screen time till the final 15 minuets.
Unlike New Tricks, I didn't find this very funny and the fishing village location (shot in Northern Ireland) wasn't very interesting, either. I hope now that the threesome have found each other it'll pick up - the lengthy extract of the next episode seemed like it may be a bit better so I'll give it a second go, but the main problem is that the main characters aren't very likeable and need more personality and charisma.
Luke, The Custard TV, 3rd May 2008'I am the best safe-cracker this country has ever produced!' hisses Maurice Riley (Anthony Head) as he fiddles his way through a phalanx of whirring mechanical wotsits. Such an assertion would be worrying at the best of times, but the fact that it's uttered by a man in a pink satin blindfold suggests that this is not a character to be trifled with. And he's not.
In the first episode of this curious new comedy drama we join the putatively reformed criminal and his hapless chum Syd (Warren Clarke) as they relocate from the Costa del Larceny to a dinky village in Devon. The resulting romp has some flashes of sweetness - not least the wonderful Dean Lennox Kelly as a crafty publican - but so cantankerous is Maurice, and so daft are his scrapes, that you may find it difficult to care.
Sarah Dempster, Radio Times, 1st May 2008Telegraph Article
Anthony Head, Warren Clarke and Jenny Agutter talk to The Telegraph about the worst crimes they've ever committed.
Michael Deacon, The Telegraph, 26th April 2008