DIAMONDS AREN'T FOREVER (HIDDEN ASSETS)

It's a measure of how far RTE drama has come that within weeks of being broadcast in Ireland, the thriller 'Hidden Assets' was snapped up by BBC4.

A co-production with Screen Ireland, Screen Flanders and AMC's Acorn TV, its Irish and Belgian settings and its mix of English and Flemish speaking characters no doubt appealed to BBC4's programmers who have always had a penchant for European police thrillers.

The central dynamic of a female Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) investigator from Ireland and a streetwise Belgian cop evokes memories of 'The Bridge'.

However that formula is also fused with the forensic combing of financial accounts and the interrogative style of BBC1's corruption drama 'Line of Duty'.

'Hidden Assets,' it has to be said, doesn't come up to the standard of either of those shows.

Nevertheless, it is a pretty decent stab at it.

Angeline Ball plays Criminal Assets Bureau investigator Emer Berry who at the start of writer Peter McKenna's six part series is leading a raid on the home of Desmond Eastwood's Co Limerick criminal Darren Reid.

During the search, Berry and her team uncover some rough cut diamonds hidden in a cage and attempt to uncover all Reid's contacts on his smartphone.

However that effort is thwarted as someone remotely wipes most of them from his phone.

The team manage to capture a few names and they take Reid in for questioning.

Meanwhile in Belgium, while the country is in the throes of an election campaign, a fashion show ends in carnage as Rafik Bobo's bomber enters the host venue and a device is detonated.

Wouter Hendrickx's Antwerp cop Christian de Jong and his colleagues trace the bomber to an apartment where the body of a Syrian woman is found.

The apartment is owned, however, by Darren Reid and when Emer goes to Antwerp to find out more and realises it is a crime scene, she finds herself being swooped upon by Christian's team.

Once they confirm she is an Irish Criminal Assets investigator, Christian embarks on a joint investigation with Berry and agrees to fly to Shannon to question Reid about the apartment.

There is an initial tension between Emer and Christian but soon they start to trade information.

Emer and her colleagues, Aaron Monaghan's Sean Prendergast, Cathy Belton's Nora Dillon and Kwaku Fortune's Josh Ola establish connections between Reid and Peter Coonan's cocky, sharp suited, shady businessman Fionn Brannigan.

The Brannigan family have been suspected of money laundering in the past. 

Fionn's late father, in particular, was suspected of hiding ill gotten earnings from the Irish state.

Christian and Emer's initial focus is on Reid but before they can question hom, he is gunned down outside a Garda station.

Attention, therefore, switches to Brannigan who runs a private airplane company and has links to Antwerp.

The CAB pores over details of any companies he operates in Ireland and abroad - hoping it might help them trace the missing millions his father laundered.

Brannigan's sister, Simone Kirby's Bibi Melnick also comes onto the radar of the joint investigators after it emerges she illegally employed in Antwerp port the Syrian woman found murdered in Reid's flat.

Bibi is married to Charlie Carrick's Canadian citizen James Melnick whose father, Michael Ironside's shipping magnate Richard Melnick is flirting with endorsing a populist, right wing, anti immigration Belgian politician, Steve Geerts' Viktor Maes. 

Can Emer and Christian link the Melnicks and Fionn Brannigan to Darren Reid's stash of diamonds?

How do Fionn's dodgy dealings fit into the Antwerp bomb attack?

And with fears mounting in Antwerp that another bombing is imminent, can Christian and the Belgian police foil the attack?

When 'Hidden Assets' was broadcast on RTE in Ireland in December, it had the misfortune of following the channel's slick gangster drama with AMC 'Kin' - another Peter McKenna creation with Ciaran Donnelly.

Not only did its smaller budget tell on the small screen but a few critics in Ireland also unfavourably contrasted the show's more lumpy exposition to 'Kin's' assured storytelling.

While it is true the show is at times clunky, 'Hidden Assets' nevertheless gets by on some rough charm and a lot of that is down to the performances of Ball, Hendrickx and Kirby.

A spin-off of the much weaker 2017 RTE and Acorn TV crime drama 'Acceptable Risk,' Ball returns to the role she first took on in that series and enjoys being the lead.

There's something refreshingly uncomplicated about her character Emer Berry, it has to be acknowledged.

She isn't a bag of neuroses like most modern cop drama heroes, nor does she suffer like Saga Noren from Asperger's and a complicated family history.

McKenna, his fellow writer Norma Regan and Ball create a straight as an arrow cop who is just focused on doing her job well - uncovering wrongdoing and recovering assets.

Hendrickx's Christian de Jong is similarly uncomplicated - an equally determined Belgian police officer who is just fixed on catching the bad guys.

Ball and Hendrickx make a likeable team, managing the early bumpy start of their characters' story arc and developing a real rapport.

It is to their and the writers' credit that the show resists the obvious cliche of the two becoming a romantic item.

Although that possibility is held open for future series.

But if Ball and Hendrickx are pleasure to watch, it is Simone Kirby who arguably steals the show.

She delivers a standout performance as Bibi, keeping the audience guessing about the extent of her character's corruption.

Always an intelligent presence onscreen, Kirby uses her body language very effectively throughout the six episode run to convey a shiftiness under the public image of a smooth business operator.

As for the rest of the cast, they do what is expected of them - although you can't help feeling an actor with the experience of Ironside should have a bit more to do in the show.

Actor and occasional scriptwriter Mark O'Halloran also feels underused as Darren Reid's solicitor, while Sophie Jo Wasson bides her time as Fionn Brannigan's wife Siobhan until she finally gets to flex her acting muscles in later episodes.

As for Coonan, it is good to see him playing a different class of criminal, while Eastwood does what is required of him as Reid.

Belton, Monaghan and Fortune turn in diligent, if unspectacular performances as members of the CAB investigative team.

At times, McKenna and Regan's thriller finds itself going down a few unnecessary narrative rabbit holes - a pursuit through the Irish countryside of Darren Reid's killers feels a little like the writers have conjured up the chase sequence because the producers expect it of them.

And while it sustains its audience's interest, not all the threads sewing the narrative together are convincing - particularly the subplot about the Belgian election.

Nevertheless, directors Thaddeus O'Sullivan and Kadir Ferati Balci do an effective job with a more restricted budget compared to other police dramas and they keep the action moving along - picking up pace just when it looks like 'Hidden Assets' might be about to run out of petrol.

'Hidden Assets' isn't the best crime show around but it is above above average.

There's plenty in there to justify Ball and Hendrickx revisiting their characters in another series.

And with a little luck, McKenna, his writers and directors will get a bigger budget to play with if they do get another chance.

That will be the real measure of whether 'Hidden Assets' has legs.

A bigger budget will enable storylines that can really challenge a promising central cast.

It will also test whether McKenna and his writers and directors have the narrative bravery to take their characters into the darkest of places.

('Hidden Assets' was broadcast on RTE1 in Ireland from November 7-December 12, 2021 and on BBC4 in the UK from January 15-29, 2022)