The art forgery of the century? Inspector Bruce is on the case!
As detective Fiona Bruce returned with her deerstalker and magnifying glass on the fascinating Fake Or Fortune (BBc1), she was able to call on an impeccable crime witness: young Fiona Bruce.
the presenter turned to a news clip from 1999 of herself, reporting on a forgery scam dubbed the art world’s crime of the century. Both Fionas were brisk and sharp, with sensible auburn bobs, but one could have been the other’s daughter.
Fiona and art connoisseur Philip Mould were intent on discovering whether a still life attributed to a largely forgotten english master, William Nicholson, was genuine. Not so, said the leading expert, who dismissed it as a probable copy.
even the artist’s grandson filed the work in his ‘dustbin’ of fake images. this was a bit of a blow to the woman who’d paid £165,000 for the painting — and to the Mayfair gallery specialising in Nicholsons which had sold it.
But this utterly addictive show hasn’t earned its primetime place on sundays by whipping up public sympathy for art collectors.
We love it because it delivers real- life forensic investigation, against a background of fraud and skulduggery. And we tune in to see inspector Bruce, with her slightly prissy sidekick detective sergeant Mould, uncover the truth.
the clues came thick and fast. For a start, the monogram signature looked all wrong. But ds Mould, despatched to interview an expert in Ottawa, discovered the initial had been painted over the artist’s own thumbprint. Good work, sarge.
the inspector tracked down the notorious forger from her long-ago news report and arranged a meet in a dingy soho pub. she didn’t exactly slap him about — this isn’t the sweeney — but she made the man sweat.
Under intense questioning, the dodgy dauber admitted that yes, he had faked Nicholsons, but not this one. He was so rattled that he crossed himself, muttering, ‘Knife, fork, spoon and mug’ — the jailbird’s catechism.
Amid all this excitement we were absorbing a steady stream of art details: Nicholson’s most celebrated student, for instance, was Winston churchill.
Also, if you haven’t got any oil paints, try mixing ordinary household emulsion with KY Jelly. Now there’s a trick.
tony Robinson was bursting with tips and trivia as his landscape exploration show Hidden Britain By Drone (c4) finally got off the ground.
Last week’s opener was a shocker, based around a tour of an Argos warehouse, but this time the subjects were less tacky, more spectacular.
the remote control cameras swooped around the armoured pill boxes on stilts off the Kent coast at Red sands, and then soared through the ruins of the disused chatterley Whitfield colliery in staffordshire, zooming through broken windows and down giant chimneys.
dilapidated Riber castle in derbyshire was another fine subject, thanks to thieves who have made off with the stately home’s entire roof.
this is what drones do best, giving us aerial views of decaying treasures. the show works less well when tony insists on taking the cameras underground, into nuclear bunkers and tube excavations: a tunnel is a tunnel, however you film it.
At the outset, he promised us ‘a breathtaking aerial adventure’. it’s pretty obvious that, to live up to that headline, the show has to stick to the skies.