Inside Men, BBC One

It certainly started with a bang. The whirlwind opening sequence of the BBC's new four-part drama depicted a cash depot heist by a masked gang unfolding in something close to real time, and thrummed with blood and nervous tension. Security guard Chris was shot in the leg. His boss, John Coniston, was roughed up. Back at home, his family were being held hostage at gunpoint. Both men, it transpired, were in on the job, while warehouse worker Marcus was one of the armed gang. Inside Men, clearly, was going to be why- rather than a whodunnit.

The heist took place in September. The remainder of this first episode scrolled back to the previous January, and we gradually came to learn a little about how and why these three very different men decided to rob their own workplace. After the panic and adrenalin of the opening 10 minutes, a calm sense of routine descended. We learned that John (Steven Mackintosh) had been at the security depot nearly seven years, all of them uneventful. “Not even criminals want cash these days,” he said. “Online, that’s where you’ll find them." He and his wife (a convincing essay in quiet despair from Nicola Walker), desperate to adopt, finally had a child to look after, but disappointment and disillusion clung to them like mildew. He was Mr Dependable, the man who always made the numbers add up, but you could tell just by looking that he was crushed.  

John's quicksilver transformation from by-the-book gamekeeper to poacher seemed a trifle abrupt

Inside Men was commendably low on flash, which made the violence when it came – and graphic, bloody and unglamorously realistic it was, too – all the more abrasive. The depot was depicted as just another factory, dealing with money rather than beans or biscuits. There was a story sitting behind each bundle of notes, and it was these ordinary human lives – three of them, to be precise – which most interested writer Tony Basgallop. The principals weren’t geezers or gangsters, just harassed working men looking to make an extra buck, gradually yielding to the temptation that surrounded them every day.