Crisscrossing tracks and clues make for high-stakes viewing in this BBC Four documentary about a sensational haul of art that vanished into thin air 30 years ago
Charley Hill is a retired detective for the Metropolitan police’s art and antiques squad. He helped to recover Edvard Munch’s The Scream after it was stolen from the Oslo National Gallery, and assorted other old masters, including a Vermeer, a Goya and a Titian – functioning as a one man A(rt)-Team. If you have a missing painting problem, if no one else can find it and if you can find him …
Last year he got a tipoff from one of the many contacts he has made in the shadows over the years about the location of 13 art works – including three Rembrandts, five Degas, a Manet and a Vermeer – that were stolen 30 years ago from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston. They were, says his informant, a career criminal called Martin Foley, taken out of the US and have resided ever since behind the wall of a safe house somewhere in Dublin. The Billion Dollar Art Hunt (BBC Four), written and presented by the arts journalist John Wilson, follows Hill as he chases down the latest lead in a case that the FBI (and private hires, and hobbyists, and fellow retirees, and bloggers and assorted recidivists) have never ceased pursuing. The reward for their safe return now stands at $10m (£7.6m).
