The Score: Bank Robber Diaries (Acast Studios/Western Sound)
Hunted (Endeavor)
Crime (and punishment) has long been an obsession for anyone interested in stories. Breaking the rules is thrilling, the fallout revealing. At least, it is in drama. Much real-life crime is grim and sad, committed for predictable reasons and with predictably awful results. Despite what fiction would have us believe, everyday crime is rarely startling, seldom involving extraordinary serial killers, criminal masterminds or brilliant psychopaths.
Meet Joe Loya. Loya describes himself, now, as looking like he ate his younger self. He’s big, 55, Mexican. He’s very charming and articulate. He is telling us about how he used to rob banks. And if you’re expecting a lengthy pre-robbery strategy session, a careful casing of the joint and assessment of security, you won’t be getting that. “How much have you planned this all out in advance? What did you know going into it? How are you going to go in? How are you going to get away?” asks Ben Adair, the presenter. “Nuttin’, nuttin’, nuttin’,” says Loya. “You can’t just rob a bank with no plan, can you?” wonders Adair. It turns out you can. Loya simply wrote down “We have a bomb, this is a bank robbery” and passed the note to a bank clerk.
No planning, then, but there was a buildup. Loya is very good at explaining his mindset. He kept walking into banks, psyching himself up to rob them… and then he’d walk out and go to a fast-food joint for a coffee. He knew he had to break through his fear, he says, because on the other side of it was “a big payoff”. He describes getting past his fear as walking through a curtain: “When you run past your fear, then that curtain evaporates and you get to the next level.”
Though he makes it sound like becoming an elite sportsman or graduating from a self-actualisation course, once Loya pushes through his fear, the robbery he commits is – you guessed it – quite mundane. And he ends up in jail, where he has to protect himself. “Jail was OK. It’s like camp but with extreme violence,” he says. (Those of a faint heart, be warned: he details that violence. “It’s a good move of mine,” he says, when he recalls kneeing someone in their softest spot. “Choking and nut kicking.”)
Small potatoes crime, at least so far. Does it sound interesting? It is. Adair, who worked on Dr Death, is a great interviewer, and Loya an excellent interviewee. And this opening episode of new series The Score: Bank Robber Diaries is utterly gripping, even though the robbery itself – he gets away with $4,500 – is hardly a great heist. Loya is a character, and I look forward to hearing about his mundane, interesting, criminal past.
More criminal activity in another new series, Hunted. This one’s a drama, with a great star, Parker Posey. Posey plays deputy marshal Emily Barnes, called in to catch four criminals who have broken out of a local jail. Barnes is a mum, with a kid who has a nut allergy (this fact is dropped in with a CLANNNNNGGGG, so one assumes it will become relevant), and she also messed up her last case. One of the criminals Barnes is chasing is soft-spoken and clever, the others violent and volatile.
While I was listening to Hunted, I kept marvelling at how cliched it was. No one does anything you haven’t seen before; plot points are dropped in exactly where expected; everything is weirdly predictable, yet engrossing all the same. Then I checked who made it. It’s produced by Wolf Entertainment, which makes the Law & Order TV series. Hunted is just as straightforward and straightforwardly enjoyable as that. The pictures it throws up are familiar, because the story – and the audio – is very televisual. Everyone is easy to understand and the show whips along with pace and drive. You won’t be surprised, but you won’t be dissatisfied, either. Crime can be so comforting.
Three podcasts for new men
Tom Neenan Is Not All Men
This show is Alan Partridge-style brilliant. Neenan – “one of the good guys” - wants us to know that he’s a feminist, and that maybe we could learn from him. He went on the Women’s March and completed it in the fastest time. He has a section on the show about what’s new and feminist called FemFresh. He’s written a screenplay featuring a woman who is both “flighty and carefree, whimsical and eccentric”, and who represents every single woman ever. This show is properly, wonderfully lol-ful. If you only listen to one thing this week, Neenan’s yer man.
How Do You Cope?... With Elis and John
This amiable, overlong podcast has a nice atmosphere, and Elis James and John Robins are clearly lovely. But don’t listen to Tom Neenan before this, because it will ruin it. “There are effs and jeffs… we do cover some heavy stuff,” say James and Robins. Later: “Wowsers.” They talk more than their guests, humblebrag a lot, and over-explain quite simple points. But their second episode, featuring radio presenter and writer Emily Dean, is touching and revealing, and any show that encourages young men to express an emotion other than anger is good by me.
Dave Berry’s Dadpod
First-time dads, like first-time mums, have wandered out of their old life and into another, the door closing behind them, never to be reopened. Berry has recently become a father, and has turned this life-shock into a show, featuring celebs such as John Thomson and Emma Willis. Naturally exuberant and positive, Berry refers often to “trial and error”, the natural state of early parenthood. The more experienced parents try to warn him about the later years, but, really, Berry’s in his moment and that’s OK. He’s only four shows in. Let’s revisit him in 15 years.
