Michael Craig has a fast car, it's a Jaguar. William Lucas drives a Ford Popular, popular a decade earlier. These chalk and cheese characters are integral to the planning and success of a daring security van heist. Craig is the ruthless, stop at nothing robber. Lucas, the jittery, bite yer fingernails down to the elbows, inside man.
With boastful claims about the newly introduced van's safe as houses structure and state of the art technology, as the gang prepare and the tough, occasionally violent modern jazz score kicks in, there is a sense of predictability. Needless to say, setbacks occur on the day. Stuck in a traffic jam, the truck (central to the operation) contrives to convert a three point turn into a 103 point turn attracting police attention along the way......obviously!
When the robbery results in the death of the van driver and the fatal shooting of a gang member, every thing starts to unravel. Guilt ridden Kenneth Griffith joins Lucas as newly signed up members to The Lachrymose Club, whilst Craig and Tom Bell turn on each other in a welter of greed and jealousy. As the police talk a good game, but do little else, widowed Billie Whitelaw remains calm and unflappable. Calculatedly targeting the weakest link, unhappily married to Francoise Prevost; (they never get along like a house on fire!) she spooks and intimidates the already broken Lucas through stealth and secrecy, hoping that her composed approach will lead to the main protagonist.
Grim and unforgiving. The polar opposite of the previous year's 'League of Gentlemen', 'Payroll' takes on an unremittingly tense and abrasive tone. The only minor gripe: Whitelaw is clearly seen leaping aboard a Newcastle Transport bus.....yet there's not a hint of a Geordie accent from start to finish.... Wae aye man!
With boastful claims about the newly introduced van's safe as houses structure and state of the art technology, as the gang prepare and the tough, occasionally violent modern jazz score kicks in, there is a sense of predictability. Needless to say, setbacks occur on the day. Stuck in a traffic jam, the truck (central to the operation) contrives to convert a three point turn into a 103 point turn attracting police attention along the way......obviously!
When the robbery results in the death of the van driver and the fatal shooting of a gang member, every thing starts to unravel. Guilt ridden Kenneth Griffith joins Lucas as newly signed up members to The Lachrymose Club, whilst Craig and Tom Bell turn on each other in a welter of greed and jealousy. As the police talk a good game, but do little else, widowed Billie Whitelaw remains calm and unflappable. Calculatedly targeting the weakest link, unhappily married to Francoise Prevost; (they never get along like a house on fire!) she spooks and intimidates the already broken Lucas through stealth and secrecy, hoping that her composed approach will lead to the main protagonist.
Grim and unforgiving. The polar opposite of the previous year's 'League of Gentlemen', 'Payroll' takes on an unremittingly tense and abrasive tone. The only minor gripe: Whitelaw is clearly seen leaping aboard a Newcastle Transport bus.....yet there's not a hint of a Geordie accent from start to finish.... Wae aye man!