TV Review: The Artful Codgers, Channel 4, UK

The Independent (Robert Hanks)

From the inaccurately punning title on, The Artful Codgers played the story of the Greenhalgh family of Bolton for laughs: tee-hee, look at the uneducated working-class types putting one over on the snooty, silly art market. But by the end, the story was starting to look a lot less funny than the programme wanted to let on.

You'll remember the Greenhalghes: George and Olive and their son, Sean, who were convicted last year of making at least £850,000 from selling forged works of art. The stuff they sold covered an astonishing range – Assyrian reliefs, Egyptian statuary, a heavily decorated Roman plate, paintings by Lowry, modern sculptures – and the police expected to find a complicated operation involving several forgers. After all, most forgers specialise: they paint or they carve. Instead, they found that Sean had knocked it all up by himself in the garden shed, having done the necessary research in the local public library. George, 84, did most of the selling, and was evidently a charming and accomplished liar. He also span some impressive stories about his war record, and had the medals to back them up, but he had actually spent most of the Second World War in prison for desertion.

The high point of their success was the sale of the "Amarna Princess" to the Bolton Museum for more than £400,000. This was purportedly an Egyptian figurine depicting one of Tutankhamun's sisters – damaged, but still a graceful object.

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