In recent years, British film and TV has enjoyed a renaissance of the heist as a form of redistributive justice. King of Thieves, starring Michael Caine, told the story of how a ragtag band of old-timers robbed Hatton Garden, while, earlier this year, the late Roger Michell directed The Duke, a crowd pleaser about the theft of a Goya painting. Perhaps the next big-screen adaptation will tell the story brought to life, pleasingly inquisitively, in BBC Three’s Who Stole Tamara Ecclestone’s Diamonds?
Tamara Ecclestone, in case you didn’t know, is the daughter of billionaire Bernie Ecclestone (who has, this month, been charged with tax fraud). Having previously sought fame as a reality TV star, she now lives a quiet, if rarefied, life in a mansion in Kensington Park Gardens, with her husband Jay, and their kids. While they’re away in Lapland for a Christmas treat, their house is burgled, and the intruders escape with £20m worth of jewellery and watches. What follows is not a celebration of their audacity, but the pan-European story of how the thieves were, eventually, snared by British police.
