Inside Men

Right up front I should tell you that 'Inside Men' plays with time. It begins in 'the present' then moves back and forth between the now and the past. Things / events we experience in the now get us leaning one way, events in the past get us leaning another. The series-makers' hope must have been that at a certain point between the present and the distant past, all would make sense to the viewer. And it does. But by then - at least in my opinion - the viewer is so tired of leaning that he or she no longer cares. And during the series' fourth and final episode my lack of caring was monumental.

Steven Mackintosh as the 'hero' / 'anti hero' is quite good. His is a face we can care about, root for, have hopes for. Nicola Walker plays John's never-suspecting wife. Ashley Walters and Warren Brown play employees of John's; the three of them possibly involved with a scheme to rob a 'cash depot' (where banks' cash is distributed) of 150 million British Pounds. Or possibly they are not involved. Or maybe just one of them. Or two? The answer to this, the "who' of this mystery, is what keeps the story going.

Until that final fourth episode. Which is really too bad.

Inside Men is the kind of antihero drama that's become so trendy lately boiled down to its essentials in four hours of drama. Steve Mackinotsh gives a great performance as the central character, who doesn't so much transform from nebbish bank manager to near-sociopathic bank robber as reveal the ruthless criminal that was always hidden beneath the benign bourgeois facade -- and that might be beneath our benign bourgeois facades too.

Ashley Waters, Warren Brown and Nicola Walker also give great supporting performances, and what helps them out is a script that makes their characters every bit as interesting as Mackintosh's. These characters are the starring roles in their own lives, and we get enough of these lives (in particular a very real depiction of working-class British life) to be interested in them. Inside Men occasionally uses melodrama in place of backstory (Chris's mother springs to mind), but for the most part the time spent in these worlds is rewarding.

Some other narrative choices are less successful. The flash-forward structure, while striking at first, quickly becomes burdensome and removes a lot of narrative tension from the events in the past. In the last episode in particular the series seems to be unable to figure out what to do with the plot. And even though a lot about Inside Men is well-done, I always found myself wondering a bit what the point was. As I said above, this is a condensed version of a show like Breaking Bad, but condensation often takes out the flavour, and what we have is a narrative we've seen done better before.

It's perhaps unfair to compare Inside Men to all previous shows with this narrative trajectory, which include some of the best TV shows ever. It's good enough to stand on its own. But in the end it comes off as just a well-executed crime story. If that sounds up your alley, give this one a shot.

I read all the reviews before deciding to contribute my own.

Did anyone notice that this series is inspired, and in fact, an extended version of the movie The Lavender Hill Mob(1951). Steve Macintosh plays the part of Alec Guinness in this series.

It's good to know that all good things that are old are not eventually forgotten. Kudos to the playwright and producer to decide to make this TV Series.

Having said that, this TV adaptation does justice to the movie. In fact, it is more riveting than the movie itself. Being a TV series, it enjoys the luxury of giving time for each of the characters to develop.

"Look at him. He is human. He is tempted!"

I recommend both the movie as well as the TV version.

Excellent story....great characters....superb performances....what can u say....another brilliant brit crime drama

This four-part BBC drama made for gripping viewing from first to last. Centring on a multi-million pound heist at a money counting house, it imaginatively moves back and forth in time until both time-streams converge in a repeat showing of the violent robbery, by which point the viewer has become informed as to the lead characters' emotional make-up, weaknesses and motivations. In the most inspired piece of writing / direction in the piece, we're at that point shown the climactic holdup scene with the perpetrators both masked and unmasked, showing us not only who did what at that point but also letting the viewer see how the criminals themselves are reacting to the pressure of their nefarious task.

The programme is also about the three lead "inside men" and their relationships with the women in their lives, for one, the de-facto leader played by Steven Mackintosh, it's his chance to re-assert his masculinity in his stale marriage, for another, Warren Brown, like Mackintosh last seen in "Luther", the petty crook, shoot for the sky / land in the gutter, delivery man, he's desperate to set his girl-friend, (later wife) up in the rich lifestyle she craves and for the third, Ashley Walters, it's a chance to escape his background of a jailbird father and drunken mother in providing a steady life for his new girlfriend and their forthcoming child.

My only problems with the well layered narrative were the too-obvious way Mackintosh's wife worked out who her captor was and the unbelievability of Mackintosh's motive, culminating in a slightly anti-climactic ending, while the constant shifts in time just occasionally seemed dizzying and confusing. There was also an awkward, artificial scene where Mackintosh was lecturing his newly adopted six-year old daughter on how wrong is sometimes right, something I'm not sure even the most hardened crook would do.

These quibbles apart, the story was quite excellently acted, Mackintosh outstanding as the shrinking violet who finds within himself the tough guy he'd been suppressing for years, with Brown almost as good as the dim but game accomplice and Walters likewise very good as the security man wrestling with his conscience.

The direction rarely flagged with the tension kept close to boiling point throughout in what was one of the best home-grown mini-series I've seen in a long time.