Review: Light-fingered store bandits steal the show

'OI'M too young to go straight,' said a lippy little thief in Cutting Edge's (C 4) intriguing film about shoplifting. 'Oi suppose oi'm going through one of those stages.' He had stayed in the educational system long enough to be able to perform simple calculations - for example, 'If you can earn pounds 30 a week on a YTS scheme and pounds 30 in 10 seconds by stealing, which offers the better return on your time?' He knew his rights too. 'Oi want a mattress]' he bellowed at the officer locking his cell door, not a bit abashed by his accommodation but decidedly indignant about the service.

Megan Brooks, a thief who demands cash refunds, effectively forcing large department stores to fence their own goods, takes a similar view. 'At the end of the day the law's on my side,' she announced with a smile, explaining how a suitably aggrieved and aggressive attitude will make most shop assistants wilt.

Until now Megan has been a big star on the blurry little black-and-white tellies that sit in the corner of the security office (you saw her here hectoring pounds 100 out of Marks & Spencer). This was presumably her first national broadcast and she wasn't half enjoying it, cheerfully detailing her methods and her income ('On a good day pounds 2,000, pounds 1,300. On a bad day pounds 500'). She dispensed with the electronic bathroom window that usually protects the identity of the guilty, which suggests that she is either planning a long foreign holiday or wants a little bit more of a challenge for the next few months.

Others who appeared on screen will have been less cheerful about it - anxious types caught skulking round the racks by one of the candid cameras that peer at you in virtually every large store. They behaved like bad actors auditioning for a part in Oliver Twist, eyes darting in a ludicrous pantomime of furtive stealth, talking out of the corners of their mouth to their accomplices. Had they worn stripy jumpers and carried large bags marked Swag they wouldn't have been much more conspicuous. That's why they got caught, of course, and why we can now watch them getting caught. Less dim-witted practitioners are meanwhile making a pounds 2bn dent in shopkeepers' profits.

Nobody here appeared to feel any shame about the business. Even the police treated their suspects with the sort of chatty reassurance you would expect from a nurse stitching up a minor cut in a casualty ward. It was as though they'd been involved in some regrettable accident, an implication which was reinforced by the self-pitying justifications of the thieves. 'I think it's sad that that's what I've had to do for a living,' said Megan, neglecting to explain exactly how she was forced to her life of crime.

Like many shoplifters she isn't even honest with herself - 'I don't take from anybody that's working for themselves,' she said, with as close to a pious expression as she could muster. Maybe she is stupid enough to believe that department stores don't pass on the cost of thefts to customers, but I doubt it. 'Shops and Robbers' didn't ignore the fact that you can't tempt a customer to buy without tempting a thief to steal, but just in case you were thinking of leaving with some forgiving liberal opinions concealed about your person, it arranged a nasty little shock at the exit - video film of a shoplifter who legged it when challenged, leaving his little girl to face the music.

I'm not sure whether Horizon's (BBC 2) account of an air-crash investigation was reassuring or not. On the one hand they spent 18 months and dollars 1m trying to find out why a Panamanian airliner cut a scorched gap in the rainforest, which argues a certain determination not to have it happen again. On the other hand, though they think they found out what had happened to the Boeing 737, they never found out why. The search was fascinating, like doing a 5,000-piece jigsaw which has been blown over several square miles of jungle, but you would have felt happier if they hadn't ended up with that tiny little piece of the picture missing.