The Criminal Assets Bureau review — even gangsta glitter fails to shine

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The repurposing of hot properties as hard lessons for the moberati is just one feature of the saga recounted by The Criminal Assets Bureau, a slick and lively but unduly awestruck chronicle of the titular agency’s first 25 years.

Set up after the murder of Veronica Guerin, a crime reporter, the specialist garda unit has a remit to investigate and, where appropriate, confiscate the proceeds of criminal conduct. Its intrepid personnel have scored many high-profile successes, dealing significant blows to multiple drugs empires and gang bosses — using methodologies since extensively copied by overseas law enforcement.

Over time, though, the bureau (commonly known as the CAB) has also become inordinately fond of grandiose self-promotion. The TV show — which was made with its eager co-operation and abounds with colourful reminiscences by its detectives, legal officers and senior officials — highlights both sides of the organisation’s standard operational procedure: its dedication to painstaking policework and its penchant for showboating PR.

The best thing about the two-part series is its comparative restraint. CAB hailing is a familiar catchcry in Irish crime journalism — and sometimes the agency’s media cheerleaders lose the run of themselves. The last significant onscreen effort at an organisational history was 2008’s Dirty Money, a glossy TV3 six-parter fronted by Paul Williams that told a lucid and engaging story but was marred by an excess of moody atmospherics and presentational posturing. Here, much of the same ground is covered with a similarly reverential approach. There is liberal use of aggrandising visual techniques such as slo-mo — and every talking head is introduced with one of those painterly close-ups that resemble Renaissance portraits of preening aristocrats. Overall, though, a discernibly tight grip is kept on the theatrical gimmickry.

Episode one opened with yet another reprise of the CAB’s origin story, the most dog-eared tale in Irish crime TV. The closest we got to new information was a smattering of candid recollections from Nora Owen and Ruairi Quinn about the panic and fury that erupted within the government of which they were leading lights after Guerin’s assassination in 1996. Quinn delivered his contribution with an incongruously macho swagger, every other line heavily seasoned with salty language. Owen, by contrast, made a virtue of her refusal to swear. “I don’t want to use bad words,” she said. “But I thought, ‘These so-and-sos have got to be stopped!’

Within weeks the Oireachtas had passed the legislation required for the CAB and an unprecedented crackdown on the country’s gang bosses. “I knew I couldn’t shoot them but I was going to go as close to shooting them as I possibly could,” Quinn recalled.

Revelation and fresh insight are conspicuously scarce in a series that functions primarily as a celebratory compendium of greatest hits from the CAB vaults. The most intriguing aspect of Wednesday’s episode was its extended concentration on property seizures, an underreported aspect of the agency’s endeavours. We were given a guided tour of one former gangster redoubt — a house notable for its extravagant decor but oppressive pokiness. Prolonged confinement in cramped spaces appears to be an occupational hazard for modern-day mobsters. Gangland careers usually end in prison or an early grave, but, even at the height of their supposed supremacy, most crime bosses prioritise safety above free movement, with many spending their days cooped up behind high walls and bolted locks. Some seek to soften their isolation by surrounding themselves with heaps of loot or prized possessions, like Egyptian pharaohs preparing for the afterlife.

One of the reasons why broadcasters are so besotted with the CAB is that reporting on its activities provides lavish opportunities for long, lingering shots of gangsta bling. Gauzy montages featuring luxury watches, designer footwear, twinkly jewellery, monogrammed leather goods and enormous bags stuffed with cash are a recurring motif throughout the series. Before long, however, these cartoonish collages become a chintzy blur that tells us a great deal of nothing very much. All that glitters is not TV gold.

Backstories of unusual depth and richness are the core strength of Murder in the Badlands, an elegiac but determinedly clear-eyed four-part series revisiting the brutal killings of four young women in Northern Ireland in four separate decades. At first glance the format is almost wearyingly hackneyed in its adherence to the conventions of unsolved-case crime documentary, with a clunky overreliance on testimony and speculation from the standard mix of forensic scientists, criminologists and journalists. There’s also the irksome problem of a floridly hokey opening narration that invites us to view the Ulster landscape as uniquely eerie — a vapid quirk that belongs on the cutting-room floor.

However, what distinguishes the show in a positive manner is the discernible efforts of its producers to reclaim the murdered women from the lurid headlines and dehumanising victimhood into which they have all disappeared to varying degrees. Each edition is a spacious 60 minutes long, much of which is devoted to exploring the lives of these individuals rather than simply the circumstances of their deaths. Rounded character studies gradually emerge, not least because of the extra breathing space accorded to interviews with bereaved family members.

True crime TV is not a court of law but, sometimes, it can do justice to the stories it seeks to tell.