The Thieving Headmistress

This programme is based on the actions of ex Nun Headmistress Colleen McCabe. McCabe syphoned off approximately £258,000 from the school she was running-and left the school and pupils in a sorry state. In addition to the dramatised scenes, this programme features comments from the staff and pupils at the school. This programme, a total classic needs to be released on DVD. Pauline Quirk, who I thought was OK in Birds of A Feather, is brilliant in this role. There are some really laugh out loud scenes in the programme, coupled with some more subtle bits. All the actors give great performances. Actor Geoffrey Palmer contributes a highly amusing narration that just adds the cherry to the top of this cake. The final scenes involving the expensive jewellery and the rosary beads cracks me up. Don't be put off by comments about this show being lack lustre, it's well worth seeing and very, very tongue in cheek.

Having started her adult life as a nun, Colleen McCabe moved into teaching and found herself quite good at it. Her Catholicism marks her out at her faith school and, when the job of headmaster comes up, she applies for it and gets it. One of her first steps is to take the school away from the local authority and make it more of a private business. Of course with this certain financial controls are weakened or removed and Colleen allows herself the freedom to spend on her colleagues and herself. However what starts as expensive team meeting dinners turns into diamond rings and holidays for herself on the corporate credit card.

Although the end of the story is known, the film does a good job of undermining itself at the start when it reveals that nobody knows why Colleen did what she did. The theory seems to be personal greed but there is little to work with here and as a result the film struggles with the lack of depth. Knowing where it is all heading also takes all the tension and development out of it and makes it surprisingly dull. The narration makes it feel like more of a crimewatch reconstruction rather than a film – a feeling not helped by the lack of depth in the piece. Hull's direction is also lacklustre, framing shots in unimaginative ways and using a clunky and obvious "last supper" moment as his only attempt at invention.

The cast can't do much with their disjointed reconstructions. Quirke plays Quirke and never convinces as a real person. She works as a headmistresses type but she never gets beyond the window dressing – although her performance looks like a career best when compared to the horrid mess that she sings over the end credits. With her struggling to make anything of the character, nobody else stands much of a chance to standout. Support from Cellier, Lawson, Roscoe and others is all solid enough but nobody can produce what one would call a performance. I forget who the narrator was but he does the whole thing like he was the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – a comic touch that is out of place.

Overall a rather bland dramatisation of a real situation. With no tension, atmosphere or development, it just is a clunky reconstruction. With no insight and the means and ending already known, I'm not sure what the film was trying to achieve but if it aspired to be anything of value then I'm afraid it failed.

The story of Colleen McCabe, a former nun, who became a teacher, and ultimately a head teacher, and in charge of a very large school budget.

Where do you even begin, so many questions, the main one, how did nobody twig what she was doing, and how did it take so long for it to come to an end?

Poor Maureen, she was well and truly thrown under a bus by Colleen.

The production itself, it's a wonderful hour long docu drama, incredibly watchable. What an amazing story, it's very well made, the acting is first rate. The interviews and first hand accounts really add something.

The narration from Geoffrey Palmer is fabulous, he's so cutting, so sarcastic, much missed.

Pauline Quirke is awesome as Colleen, she's a true talent, able to do drama and comedy with ease, I am a big fan.

A cracking watch, 9/10.

There is a certain fascination in seeing how people's behaviour changes once temptation is put in their way, This re-construction of an ex nun's rise from rags to riches illegally demonstrates how people of all creeds and backgrounds can succumb to temptation once the safeguards have been removed. Throughout the piece, we are left wondering firstly why grant maintained schools could be allowed to operate without suitable controls in place to protect the public purse, and secondly why no one blew the whistle on a regime that was clearly putting its own interests before those of the school.

Fraud is often uncovered when an aggrieved colleague either sees blatant injustices being carried out, or are themselves excluded from rich pickings being enjoyed by others. The re-construction gave many examples of where the whistle could be blown, but it took a change of government and a return to local authority administration, and its attendant financial control procedures, for the fraud to be exposed.

I thought the documentary was well presented, with the characters and the whole situation thoroughly believable. The "Last Supper" scene was particularly effective in conveying the duplicity of those within the "inner sanctum" who will always run with the hare and the hounds.

For those unsure as to why it is necessary to put on these documentaries when the plot is well known, they should see it as an exercise in human behaviour; how people change given money, power and opportunity, and how quickly they change sides when the balloon goes up.