Luke Evans To Topline BBC’s ‘Great Train Robbery’ Serial

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By Gerard O'Donovan
10:58AM GMT 18 Dec 2013

CRITIC'S CHOICE: The Great Train Robbery


BBC One, 8.00pm


Remarkably prescient timing for the screening of this new two-part drama. The death of Ronnie Biggs has, once more, highlighted the UK's ongoing obsession with the events of August 8, 1963 and in the coming weeks we can expect a large amount of analysis of both Biggs the man and the mythology which has grown up around the Robbery. This sophisticated piece from Chris Chibnall, the man behind the hugely popular Broadchurch, is an even-handed affair, telling the story from the perspective of both the criminals and the police. It is really two separate films with tonight’s A Robber’s Tale being a terrifically pacy and tense caper-style account of the planning, build up and execution of the raid of the Glasgow to London mail train which netted the crew of thieves an astonishing haul of £2.6million in used banknotes. Chibnall puts the focus on Bruce Reynolds, the career-criminal ringleader who planned and organised the raid (and who died earlier this year). In this depiction he is a charismatic figure (Luke Evans excels in the role) though far from the “criminal mastermind” he has sometimes been portrayed as. It is all very stylish, with loving attention to period detail and attitudes, and a superb cast. A Copper’s Tale follows on Thursday at 8.00pm

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The Great Train Robbery: A Robber's Tale, BBC One, review

Tom Rowley reviews The Great Train Robbery, BBC One's eerily prescient dramatisation of Ronnie Biggs's crime

4 out of 5 stars


Luke Evans stars as Bruce Reynolds in The Great Train Robbery Photo: BBC
By Tom Rowley
9:30PM GMT 18 Dec 2013

If you want a polished drama, Chris Chibnall is your man. The writer who created Broadchurch always seems to have wrestled with every detail, ready to lay them out in front of the viewer in his own time. The only problem with polish, of course, is that it does not come rapidly.


So he may well have groaned yesterday morning when it was announced that Ronnie Biggs, the face the world most associates with the Great Train Robbery, had died. For he had just spent months creating a glossy new drama that largely sidelined Biggs.


Though yesterday’s rolling news coverage may well have increased the audience for The Great Train Robbery: A Robber’s Tale (BBC One), anyone tuning in to discover more about Biggs would have been disappointed.


That, though, is a quirk of fate, and should not detract from the quality of the drama, which instead focused on Bruce Reynolds, the robbery’s mastermind. Luke Evans excelled as Reynolds, capturing his mix of earnestness and ambition. His high-rolling lifestyle (jazz clubs, tailored suits, Aston Martins and cigars) was only a little exaggerated.


The soundtrack – including Nina Simone’s Sinnerman – evoked the Sixties with as much glamour as Mad Men. In the opening minutes, the gang strolled gingerly across a zebra crossing in an echo of the famous Abbey Road pose, only for the camera to pan out, revealing an airport car park.




Chibnall did not shy away from raw aggression: balaclava-clad men wrestled security guards to the floor, and later threatened the train driver with an axe. Yet there were also moments of unexpected humour, chiefly in the voice of Alf, the pipe-smoking substitute train driver and reluctant thief. Told that one of the getaway vehicles had been freshly stolen for the job, he cautioned: “You want to be careful – you can get pinched doing things like that.”

The constant attempts to prove Reynolds had more than a financial motive soon grew tiresome, however. It was hard to credit his insistence that the crime would be “one in the eye for all the old duffers running this country”. This may be how he later sought to justify it, but it stretched credulity to suggest this was his pitch to fellow criminals at the time.

Even so, Chibnall has breathed fresh life into a tale half a century old. I hope tonight’s conclusion – A Copper’s Tale, following the police investigation – is made with the same attention to detail. The name of investigating detective Tommy Butler may be less well known than that of Ronnie Biggs or Reynolds, but his story is no less fascinating

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