The Invisibles was a crackerjack BBC comedy crime series that arrived in 2008 and is now hitting the shelves in DVD format. The whole run is only six episodes and, sadly, there won’t be a second season.
My wife and I love these kinds of shows thjat are kind of edgy with fun characters and snappy one-liners that you have to pay attention to in order to appreciate. And The Invisibles had all of that in spades.
Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Warren Clarke (Dalziel and Pascoe) star as Maurice Riley and Syd Woolsey respectively. They’re retired thieves that were once at the top of the game. Called The Invisibles by the media because there was never a trace of them though everyone knew they were about, Maurice and Syd were never caught and chose to retire to a seaside Devon village.
The shows center on the relationship of the two men, the respective extended families, and the fact that they don’t like growing older. Even though both of them have enough to live comfortably on, they both can’t keep their minds out of the crime arena.
I really enjoyed the comfortable byplay between Maurice and Syd, as well as Maurice’s wife Barbara (played by Jenny Agutter, Spooks). When Dean Lennox Kelly weighed in as Hedley Huthwaite, the son of the deceased third Invisible, things really started to cook. All six of the episodes turn on robberies and thefts, so there is plenty of action, but they all explore bits and pieces of the characters and their interactions as well.
The first episode really leaned into the relationship between Maurice and Syd and how they rely on each other. But Syd’s son Joe gets crossways with loansharks and the Invisibles have to get back in the game to steal Joe’s life and future back for him. Syd’s life is as chaotic and full of disaster as Maurice’s seems to be filled with smooth sailing.
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