Damien Love's TV highlights

In recent weeks, stern Metropolitan police representatives have been admonishing us that we shouldn’t really sit around admiring the likes of the Hatton Garden thieves, because it’s not big, and it’s not clever. Try as they might, though, the reaction to the Hatton Gardens job proves that, in the face of the constant torrent of atrocity that makes up the news, there is a deep yearning for this kind of old-school, amateurish, against the odds Dad’s Army caper – essentially, the kind of crime they once made Ealing comedies about, rather than the kind of crimes they currently make depressing documentaries about.

Director Ben Lewis has done us a great service, then, with The Great Gangster Film Fraud, a documentary laying out another recent attempted scam, one that was bungled and doomed from the first, but which, despite its deep stupidity, nevertheless displayed chutzpah, and managed to snowball into an hilariously implausible story before the participants wound up behind bars.

At its heart lies a tax break. As part of a bid to boost UK movie production, any film shot here is entitled to tax relief of 25 per cent on money spent in the UK and, back in 2009, Bashar Al-Issa, a bankrupt Iraqi property hustler, hit on a scheme to exploit this to pocket some £2.5 million from the taxman, by faking the production of a £20 million movie.

To aid, he enlisted Aoiffe Madden, a struggling actor who had decided to jack it in and become a primary school teacher. Together, pooling their knowledge of film production (ie, none), the pair announced they were making a phantom blockbuster called A Landscape Of Lives under the banner of Evolved Films. Al-Issa devoted more energy, however, to creating other companies, which immediately invoiced Evolved for imaginary work costing £5 million – of which Evolved promptly claimed £800,000 back from HMRC as VAT, without, of course, ever paying the invoice.

Despite Al-Issa and Madden putting together a snazzy Powerpoint presentation claiming they were courting Omar Sharif and “Michael Kane” for significant roles, HMRC’s suspicions were aroused. When the footage they provided as evidence their film existed failed to allay the taxman’s concerns (largely because it seemed to have been shot in a hurry in someone’s flat with a cheap video camera), Al-Issa and Madden were arrested.

It’s here, though, their story gets interesting. Released on bail, the pair decided to prove their innocence by going ahead and actually making a movie. To this end, they recruited a director, Paul Knight, an ex-bouncer with dubious connections, who had previously made one low-budget geezer gangster movie, Thugs, Mugs And Violence, not to be confused with the Alan Bennett play of the same title.

Armed with the somewhat reduced budget of £84,000, Knight started shooting the film, now audaciously retitled A Landscape Of Lies, with a cast of faintly familiar TV faces, including, of course, Loose Women’s Andrea McLean – none of whom realised that, instead of making a movie, they were actually working on Al-Issa and Madden’s alibi.

Ben Lewis’s film on this affair is straight-ahead, but always entertaining. The footage from Knight’s film is particularly good value, especially scenes claiming to be shot in the Jordanian desert, but which are clearly leafy Hertfordshire. The best contributions, though, are perhaps those of Alison Chipperton, the bemused, no-nonsense HMRC investigator on their trail. Ideally, Helen Mirren will play her in the movie. Unless she’s busy doing the Hatton Gardens film with Michael Kane.

Monday

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story Of The National Lampoon 9pm, Sky Atlantic In the UK, the National Lampoon name is best known for the 1980s comedies that seemed always to star Chevy Chase, but in the US the instant association is with the ground-breaking, drug-fuelled, long-haired, middle-finger-raised magazine from which those movies emerged – along with a host of other comedy institutions, from Animal House and Saturday Night Live to Ghostbusters and The Simpsons. A hairy, proudly obnoxious countercultural version of Mad magazine, first published in 1970 and boasting a team that eventually included Chase, John Belushi and Harold Ramis, the Lampoon’s gleefully offensive style is exemplified by artist Michael Gross’s most famous cover: a pooch, a hand holding a pistol, and the slogan “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.” Featuring interviews with the likes of Ramis, Bill Murray, John Landis, Christopher Guest, Richard Belzer and John Goodman, Douglas Tirola’s frenetic documentary on the Lampoon’s rise and flameout captures how its sick, smart, snarky humour went out like a clarion call to a generation.

Tuesday

Lucifer

Amazon Prime Instant Video

Miranda Hart’s sitcom was charming to begin with, but by the end it had become pretty hellish. Here’s why: turns out that the nice wet chef she had the hots for is actually Satan. Lucifer, adapted from characters in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, is the latest in the possibly unending stream of comic book adaptations we’re getting hit with now, in lieu of stories about, you know, people. Miranda’s drippy squeeze, Tom Ellis, plays the hot Prince Of Darkness, who has risen from Hades to run an LA nightclub, because he just has. When his favourite hot singer is gunned down, he hooks up with a hot female detective to find the killers (uh, although, being Lucifer, wouldn’t he just know?), while engaging in the traditional hot will-they-won’t they. It’s basically a hot cop show. But, I mean, the idea that a loathsome beast from hell could walk among us as a successful businessman is just daft. Look out for the documentary The Mad World Of Donald Trump on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.

Wednesday

Children Saved From The Nazis: The Story of Sir Nicholas Winton 10.45pm, BBC One Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, and at 7pm on BBC Two, Mishal Husain presents coverage of the commemoration ceremony from London’s Guildhall, where some 200 survivors will gather to remember the Nazi atrocities, and later genocides. The theme of this year’s event is “Don’t Stand By,” and tonight’s film on Nicholas Winton offers a good example of someone who didn’t. In 1939, on the eve of war, Winton, a British stockbroker, decided that he was going to try and save as many Jewish children as possible. Single-handedly setting up a body he called “The British Committee For Refugees from Czechoslovakia - Children’s Section,” he managed to get 669 children out of the Nazi-occupied country, then brought by train to the UK for adoption. Following the war, however, he mentioned it to no one, and his actions went unknown for almost 50 years. This film features Winton’s final TV interview, along with testimonies from some of those whose lives he saved.

Thursday

The Good Wife

9pm, More4

Alicia Florrick fans rejoice as Julianna Margulies returns as the bruised but undefeated Chicago lawyer for a seventh series of the much-loved I-am-woman-hear-me-roar drama. Still slick, smart, involving and surprising, The Good Wife is a good example of how old-fashioned ideas can still ensnare an audience – take a good and likeable actor, give them a well-defined character, and then just chuck life at them and see where it all leads. Things have changed a lot since we first encountered Alicia, and as this series begins, she’s almost starting over: having split from her top-flight company, she’s out on her own, trying to revive her career by taking on lowly jobs, working to get bail for crummy defendants. But the ties of her old life are still there: her husband Peter (Chris Noth) is gearing up for his run for the vice-presidency, but in the process he manages to make an enemy of his greatest asset, Eli (Alan Cumming), which will have repercussions for them all.

Friday

Spin

9pm, More4

This French political drama isn’t quite one for the ages, perhaps, but it’s very satisfying, a little bit Borgen and a little bit West Wing, with a classy Gallic hustle of its own. We’re on the penultimate episode now, and, after weeks of Machiavellian shenanigans, mud-slinging, dirty tricks, surprise revelations and sexy personal angst, the results from the presidential elections are beginning to come in. The real battle, of course, is not between the candidates, fragrant Anne Visage and slimy PM Deleuvre, but between their shadowy spin doctors, well-groomed friends-turned-rivals Kapita and Desmeuze – and even with the results declared, there’s still territory to be fought over. Spin has been somewhat buried away in its Friday night TV slot, and maybe the best way to watch it is in weekend catch-up chunks via Channel 4’s on-demand service at www.channel4.com/programmes/walter-presents, where a fistful of other foreign imports are available and waiting in the wings. I’m thinking maybe The Lens from the Czech Republic of Argentina’s Pure Evil next. Got to be better than Young Montalbano.

Saturday

Beatrix Potter With Patricia Routledge

5.50pm, More4

It being Saturday, there’s nothing actually new on TV today that’s worth watching, but it’s a good day to catch up with the repeats of shows that went out earlier in the week. Best of all is this documentary celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Peter Rabbit author and illustrator’s birth (originally broadcast Tuesday, 9pm), partly because Potter is nice and really interesting, but mostly because it’s not often we get to see the great Patricia Routledge on screen these days, and each and every opportunity is to be savoured. Routledge – who played Potter in a one-woman show in the late 1990s – is the patron of the Beatrix Potter Society, and draws upon lovely rare drawings, letters and other documents held at the V&A as she goes rambling around sunny Lake District cottages in the footsteps of the writer, exploring where her love of animals came from, and how it first fired the imagination that made her an Edwardian publishing sensation. Tea and biscuits are mandatory.