The Guardian 25th June 2001

Hornung, who wrote the Raffles stories, was the brother-in-law of Conan Doyle. There now, you’re wiser than you was. You can see the family resemblance. Raffles, brilliant and amoral, is the dark side of Sherlock Holmes, and Bunny, dim but devoted, is his loyal Watson.

In Gentleman Thief (BBC1), a one-off drama, poor Bunny has been given the chop and replaced by a common thief to give the story more street cred. Which is a bit of bad luck for Raffles (Nigel Havers) as his new sidekick Bride (Michael French) is the more magnetic of the two. Otherwise they make a feasible team. Raffles knows how to abseil into a snake pit and steal a Maharajah’s ruby but Bride knows how to get into prison. “It ain’t as difficult as you might think, Mr Raffles.”

The butler is about to swing for the theft until Bride stops the prison clock striking and Raffles knocks out the hangman and his audience (what are they all doing there?) with a blow pipe and the poison of a rare orchid, fortuitously nicked from Kew. I was particularly taken with the way the heroine bared her bust to receive the dreadful dart. I’d say they don’t write ’em like that any more but they just have.

Waffle, of course, but well-cooked waffle topped with the very best strawberry jam. John Shrapnel, playing a bear with a bald head, had perfected something between a growl and a snarl and Sir John Mills was quite startlingly good as a fence. He has been the nation’s pet for so long, you forget he was an Oscar winner first.

He told Raffles, by the way, that Bride’s real name was Joseph Barnett, “A rather wanted fellow.” I should flipping well think he is. Joseph Barnett is widely believed to be Jack the Ripper, partly because he was the discarded lover of the last victim. The choice of name was, I imagine, a happy accident but Raffles and the Ripper, now there’s a promising pairing.