Bob Hoskins narrates a six-part series on Britain's, and in particular London's, criminal underworld since the Second
World War. Future episodes will cover the Richardson and Kray gangs; Soho vice; the growth of armed robbery, supergrasses and the popularity of the Costa del Crime; and the drugs industry.
Tonight's first film Thieves takes as its starting point the "wonderful opportunity", in the words of arch-villain Frankie Fraser, created by wartime and immediate post-war shortages. Black market profits were sufficient for police pay-offs to become commonplace - the beginning, perhaps, of police corruption as a serious problem.
In the 1950s the crime of safe-cracking grew - among those taking part is former war hero Eddie Chapman , said to be the first man in Britain to use gelignite. Peter Scott had a mission to steal from the rich (though he may have forgotten the second part of Robin Hood 's dictum), and his victims included Sophia Loren.
Producer Frank Simmonds
Series producer Lorraine Heggessey
The hard men of crime
SEE FEATURE page 33