Career Criminals, TV review: Two brothers were up to no good on a Dudley council estate

Can anyone under 40 be classed as a "career criminal", asks Ellen E Jones

Tom Winket affected an air of worldly wisdom (Channel 4)

The title Career Criminals suggests the sort of hardened gangster that Ray Winstone might play in a film, but all we got here were two brothers up to no good on a Dudley council estate.

Despite 26-year-old Tom Winket's affected air of worldly wisdom, anyone under 40 is too young to be classed as a "career criminal". Thieving at that age is more like a Saturday job, surely?

Young Ben Winket's relative inexperience had not prevented him from causing headaches for PC Stewart Lewis, one of 19 specialist officers in the area, charged with tackling recidivist crime. Teenage Winket was suspected in a string of burglaries, but the mystery PC Lewis hoped to solve was not if he did it, but why? When he had no drug habit to feed and no real living costs?

The investigation eventually alighted on an older, Fagin-like character nicknamed "Pigeon". This Pigeon would have made a much better subject for this one-off documentary, but presumably he was far too canny to agree to be filmed.