ITV’s new drama about notorious 1980s jewel thief Joan Hannington has been heavily trailed as one of the small screen highlights of the autumn . There are reasons for excitement: Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner takes the lead role, her first since true crime thriller The Staircase in 2022. There’s a glorious Eighties soundtrack, spanning Soft Cell to “Club Tropicana”.
And there are oh so many fabulous, flammable-looking wigs, not to mention all the shimmering diamonds. So why does it often feel as middle-of-the-road as a Sunday morning stroll around H Samuel? The opening moments tell us that Joan is a trickster, but one who has weathered trauma: she sits in a swanky hotel in her bra, glamming herself up, her back covered in scars. Peering at a jewellery box chock-full of rolled-up banknotes, she answers the phone in a classy American accent, then drops a sparkly gem on the floor.
“F***’s sake, where did that go?” Joan mutters, suddenly revealing herself to be unaffectedly cockney. It’s an introductory mise-en-scene that suggests twists and turns, but Joan quickly settles into something less surprising and more soap opera-ish. From here, the timeline skips back to Joan at her pokey flat on the Kent coast, looking after her daughter Kelly while her deadbeat criminal husband Gary behaves erratically.
One minute he’s turning up in a sports car with gifts such as a fancy fur coat, the next he’s gone awol and Joan has shifty blokes turning up at her house in .
