MATTHEW Wright's TV WEEK: We've been Robbed as he loses the plot

WHAT'S the plan, man? That's the question I was left asking as episode one of Robbie Coltrane's big new drama - and I mean BIG new drama - The Planman, (ITV1, Monday) drew to a close.

Certainly not the F Plan, as diets do not appear to have figured large in Mr Coltrane's universe of late.

Neither have major TV series, which is a shame because Robbie is a, no-pun intended, powerful small screen performer with a large presence.

Movies like the Harry Potter flicks have kept Robbie busy - but he's also moaned about a lack of decent TV scripts.

The scripts he's turned down in recent months must have been bloody awful for Planman to have shone out in all its 25 watts of radiant glory.

Because while Coltrane might think the sun shines out of Planman's as-yet- unmapped nether regions, the rest of us who watched it on Monday night were completely lost.

For starters a fat cat QC rolling in dosh, married to a political ice maiden, doesn't strike me as likely to risk everything -career, wife, fortune - to supply a crooked ex-cop with neatly-typed documents on how to commit perfect crimes.

Targets ranged from security vans to bank vaults to...the Big One. The ultimate bank job.

And all dreamed up by the awesome mind of Coltrane's Jack Lennox. He's soon addicted to dreaming up jobs - of course he is. And when he's not thinking them up he's chatting with or passing plans to the ex-cop, Townsend.

So what do we deduce from all this? That Jack Lennox isn't a brilliant legal mind, as we - and Robbie presumably - were led to believe.

He is, in truth, not much brighter than the cast of Walking With Cavemen... 25 watts just about got it right.

And that's when the plan began to unravel, man. Because if Jack Lennox is a Lord Winston reject, then there's no way he's a barrister which means he'd never think up those plans, man or risk his fabulous career to do so. If there ever was a plan it should have been to get a decent script because the rest was well-executed, highly-watchable nonsense.

It was made more attractive, if only just, by the presence of a more deserving cast - Celia Imrie and Neil Dudgeon faring best as Lennox's ambitious missus and her lover-cum-top cop Brian Richards.

Poor old Vincent Regan wasn't so lucky. He landed the part of Jim Townsend, whose ancestors died out long before the making of Walking With Cavemen.

Too stupid to eat the plentiful pondlife that surrounded them, they starved to death and sank into the sediment.

Somehow enough of their DNA survived to spawn Townsend. Believe me, if you met him on the bus, you'd get off at the next stop. He's the reason you have a chain on your front door. Except if your name's Lennox, of course. The great criminal barrister can't stop chumming up with the crooked cop.

If Monday's episode left you wondering why on earth you'd bothered don't give up just yet.

The last few seconds of episode one gave us a tease of tomorrow's grand finale - and it looked pretty good.

So what's the plan? I'll give Coltrane the benefit of the doubt and tune in.

I say the man deserves it after cracking, geddit, some of the best roles the box has had on offer in recent times.

But the finale is going to need an awful lot of skilful twists and turns to ultimately make it worth the effort.

Copyright 2003 MGN LTD
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.