If television is the idiot's lantern then the subjective opinions of someone unqualified to write about television must surely be the idiot's lectern.

The Invisibles

BBC1, Thursdays

The set up for this new comedy drama is that Anthony Head and Warren Clarke are former criminals who retired to Spain eighteen years ago to escape the law. Now they are back and living in sheltered accommodation on the Devon coast. In their day they were the best – known as "The Invisibles" because they were invisible to even the best security as they carried out their daring raids. Or whatever. Now they just want to see out their remaining days in peace and quiet and with free healthcare. However, they can’t quite escape their past.

It isn’t a bad premise by any means – "New Tricks" has sparked a bit of a genre in retired professionals showing the younger generation how it’s done. All very grey power and all that jazz. Anthony Head’s casting is a bit of a surprise – he’s only 54 and here he is with greyed hair and supposedly fit only for the panic buttons and auqarobics of the retirement community.

Warren Clarke is more convincing as the comic sidekick. He’s the one that has to wear big glasses to be able to see the alarms he’s deactivating. He’s the one who trips over things and forgets his kit and bangs into walls. He reminds me a bit too much of an Ice Warrior but he’s one of those actors who is convincing as a copper or a criminal so he’s well suited to be a reasonably heroic felon.

Dean Lennox Kelly is the third member of the team – in true drama traditions he is the son of their former business associate. He’s also fairly clumsy and a bit rubbish but he can fight like a mutha and is given the role of the "legs" in their crime team. I spent the whole time trying to work out who he was and it was only later (about the same time I looked him up on line) that I realised he was Shakespeare in "Doctor Who and Shakespeare" last year. He plays every line like it’s going to be followed with "All right our kid?" but that’s the price we pay for living in an age where we like to pretend that non-RP accents on television is a good thing.

The problem with dramas about criminals is that it is awfully hard to do them in such a way that the main characters remain the heroes. We – the audience – don’t like criminals as a rule. They are bad people who do bad things. Unless you’re talking about romanticised historical criminals (such as Dick Turpin or Raffles) the audience have to be dragged kicking and screaming into cheering on the rudos. The crowded marketplace is currently dominated by Hustle – in which a group of beautiful people cleverly con a bunch of nasty people out of a lot of money and do so with such style, such wit and such great outfits that we’d all love to be Mickey Bricks or Stacey or Danny. There is no way the Invisibles can match Hustle for style so how are they going to keep us on the wrong side of the law?

In the first episode they were clearly reluctant to return to a life of crime. It was only when Clarke’s son was threatened by a nasty loan shark than the gang got back together and robbed said loan shark in order to pay his debt off. It was a well constructed episode because it showed us up front the strengths and weaknesses of the Head/Clarke partnership. They fixed the alarm, they cracked the safe and they would’ve got away with it had the baddies not happened to come in at just the wrong moment. So they get taped to chairs and are about to be bludgeoned when their would-be young sidekick comes in and beats the crap out of all the bad guys. Just like that. He gives them their money, tells them the debt is paid and not to come after anyone and the job is sorted.

It looks from the trailer for next week’s episode as if there may be a recurring character – a former police man who uses our heroes in return for not turning them in. That sounds like a reasonable – if entirely unoriginal – idea. It’s like the Persuaders but with Curtis and Moore as they are today. But there are only so many family members who can be in trouble to draw the reluctant criminals back into their old ways so they needed something else.

The first episode of any new series has three main jobs to do. Firstly, it introduces us to the characters. The Invisibles does this well enough – we know all we need to know about Anthony Head’s smooth, tough and ultimately likeable character, Warren Clarke’s bumbling, soft hearted and ultimately likeable character and Dean Lennox Kelly’s shifty, eager and ultimately likeable character. Secondly, it introduces us to the premise of the series. This is also achieved well enough although with the obvious caveat that no one is fooled by a bit of talc in the hair into thinking that Anthony Head is old enough for sheltered accommodation. Finally, it has to make us – the audience – watch episode two. This is where the Invisibles falls down a bit. It gives us all the jokes we were expecting in the first episode. All the pitfalls and pratfalls one would expect from two geriatric burglars have already been done. And just because this episode saw the team doing a bad thing (robbery) for a good reason (the people they robbed were evil), there was nothing to suggest that they were Robin Hoods (Robins Hood?) in the olden days. In other words, those with a moral compass might not be entirely convinced that the next five or seven or nine weeks won’t see robbery of a much less noble kind. So, because I think the programme makers feared something like this was the case, we got the longest "Next time…" promo I’ve ever seen. It must’ve lasted a good three minutes and probably showed us everything we will enjoy next week. But because the new member of the team apparently gets a nose bleed in the middle of a crime scene, I will give The Invisibles another week to win me over. The line "Don’t you have an elsewhere to be?" was the thing which made me watch the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and so a nosebleed is the tipping point which gets the Invisibles one more viewer. But I warn them that I am fickle and this series has far from won me over so far.