Put me down for another Yank who ranks it a solid 7 I thought the three hours were tightly edited with no wasted scenes. What critical info, if any, was left out I do not know, as I watched this as a preliminary to reading about the robbery. Altho I can't comment on the period detail to the extent other posters here have ("the license plate serials actually didn't change til six month later" - WOW), I think the setting, styles, and lingo were all of a piece with other 60's London films and recreations.So I enjoyed this quite a bit, including the levity - self-proclaimed "wanker boss", "key up me jacksie", Butler's smile on Thursday mornings, etc, which "offset Broadbent's stern gravity and Evans's Jon Hamm like 60's charm offensive.I especially liked the portrayal of the Butler-Williams relationship and how despite Butler's fears his underling would give more away to his "snouts" than he got, Williams' contacts did lead to at least some grassing.The final Heat-style "confrontation" with Reynolds claiming a "victimless" crime leading to such enormous sentences (yet, he was out in nine) would lead to the much greater use of guns in robberies seemed egregiously revisionist, but I suppose among the many contributing factors to that sad development was the sentencing in this case. Goody apparently was straight out framed (Paul Anderson in another wonderful performance.) Certainly in hindsight a crime committed by 15 men with at least half a dozen accomplices and netting so much cash was fated to go bust. But that Butler had to delay retirement for so long was a testimony not just to his vocation, but also to the robbers' use of that critical "luck" factor. The fact Butler left a mess for Nipper Read and had allowed Williams to go way too far off the reservation is subject matter for other films.Still, film has to make an emotional as well as an informational mark, and I'm left wanting to chalk this one up for the bad boys. Mix south London and Brighton firms and you apparently got a very lively lot. "Dreaming big", and establishing the same bond of camaraderie the Flying Squad unit did evidently trumped even the millions. Or so this engrossing film would have us believe.

Part One was mildly interesting. One is always curious to learn how a particularly complicated operation is carried out. As to the solving of the crime in Part Two, I was expecting Tommy Butler to be a detective. He wasn't. He was basically a dour, obsessive project manager who had little or no special insight into who the perps might be. He simply put together a team of men who had a lot of connections in the underworld plus one competent forensic expert, and flogged them until they brought him the names of the gang members. Then Butler would drive somewhere in his special car, arrest the unlucky chump and remove one more photo from the board. I suppose that's how the investigation was in fact carried out, but there was something unsatisfying about the whole episode. Strip out the period clothing, cars and music and what you're left with is a fairly bland and uninteresting narrative.

Firstly I will state that I enjoyed both parts of this and thought it was a good way of covering a story that has become somewhat of a folk legend. It didn't make heroes out of either the robbers or the cops, which makes a pleasant change. It did show the violence they used against driver Jack Mills and why Butler of the Yard hung doggedly on till he got his men. So after all that good stuff why do they still make silly errors that distract the viewer? One that really jarred with me (OK I'm a geeky engineer) was the UHF TV aerial on the farmhouse. UHF didn't start in UK till 1964/5. The frame less glass doors in the police station are also horribly out of era for 1963! The wrong series Land Rover (wing mounted lights came in 1969). The white Jaguar police car with a sunroof! And the railway scenes were very poor, wrong loco, wrong location, wrong track(s) (Did anyone else notice how the West Coast mainline was variously single and double track with no overhead electrification? And also with extremely sharp bends!) Obviously it had to be filmed on a preserved railway line, but it would have helped if they had used CGI and/or some scenic realism. That bridge location is an iconic 20th century image and to use a bridge that was so different is poor, perhaps the BBC should pay more attention to detail and less to senior execs!

The dramatic elements of this production were not to bad but it was spoilt by the lack of attention to period detail right from the start. We are shown a robbery in November 1962 at a fairly unconvincing London Airport (complete with CGI piston engined airliner taking off, most airlines were using jets by that time). Unfortunately, both getaway cars have "A" suffix registration plates, not introduced until January 1963. Scenes in London show Ford Zephyrs being used as police cars whereas the Met used Wolseley 6/110s almost exclusively. A senior Detecive Chief Superintendent would not be driven around in an old Mk.1 Jaguar, more likely to have had a Humber Super Snipe. When Reynolds is arrested at the end of part 2, he is taken away in a white Jaguar Mk.2 which has a Webasto sun roof, hardly likely on a police car! The railway aspects of the production are particularly poor. For a start, the locomotive used is a Class 37, not a class 40 (painting the correct number on the side does not make it a convincing stand in). The production was clearly using a preserved railway which obviously could not provide the correct four track main line (let alone electrification masts and catenary which had been installed but were not yet in use in 1963). The train is shown on what appears to be a two track railway, but is running on the wrong track, in Britain trains run on the left hand line. The ground level signal shown is a shunting signal and would not be found out on the main line. The station sign at "Glasgow" should read Glasgow Central as there were at the time three other Glasgow Termini (St. Enoch, Buchanan Street and Queen Street).No doubt others might be able to add to the list.