BritBox, a streaming service launched by BBC and ITV in 2017, has been a popular platform among British television enthusiasts. However, there are certain aspects that have resulted in it being referred to as "The Curse BritBox" by some. One of the primary criticisms aimed at BritBox is its limited content. Despite being a joint venture between two major broadcasters, the streaming service has been unable to secure rights to many classic and popular British shows. This has led to a lack of variety and a limited catalog, which can be frustrating for subscribers who expect a wide range of choices. Another issue with BritBox is its pricing structure.

The curse britbox

Crime-comedy caper set in the 80s starring Tom Davis. In East London, a gang of hopeless crooks become embroiled in a major gold heist.

Another issue with BritBox is its pricing structure. While the service offers a free trial period, the monthly subscription fee can be seen as excessive by some. This is especially true when considering the limited content library and the existence of other streaming platforms that offer a broader selection at a similar price point.

Episodes

It's the early 80s and times are hard in London's East End. When Albert and his gang of small-time crooks get more than they bargained for, life is set to change forever.

News of the robbery spreads far and wide. As the oblivious gang try to work out an even split of the gold, the police start to sniff around for clues. Will Sidney give the game away?

Mick sets about hiding the loot, while Albert and Natasha get an offer they really can't refuse. The gang escape to a safe house, but things take an unexpected turn.

Albert throws himself into smelting gold as fast as Billy can sell it on. With cash rolling in, some of the gang are invited to meet mysterious money launderer The Baptist. But cracks start to show.

Living it large with nightclubs and gold Bentleys, Mick and Phil are starting to draw unwanted attention. Meanwhile, Sidney's getting death threats. As the net closes in, is time running out?

The police are getting close, and Ma McTavish is breathing down Mick's neck for her share of the gold. Time to make a run for it. But how? Well, Albert has a plan - and this time, it might just work!

The Curse’s Plot Has Major Similarities To This Real-Life Gold Heist

The new Channel 4 comedy seems to have borrowed a few details from the notorious 1983 Brinks-Mat robbery at Heathrow.

Comedy fans, get ready. The team behind the award-winning People Just Do Nothing has a new show premiering on Channel 4 on Feb. 6 and it promises to be full of the same ridiculous, laugh-out-loud moments as their mockumentary. The Curse follows a group of friends in London’s East End in 1982 who accidentally find themselves in the middle of a high-stakes heist. While The Curse is first and foremost a comedy, parts of the show are gritty, tense, and unnervingly realistic. At the beginning of each episode, viewers are met with the disclaimer, “Some of this might have happened,” leaving us to wonder: is The Curse based on a true story?

Well, the short answer is, sort of. As Channel 4 explains, “The comedy is a fictionalized tale loosely inspired by real-life crimes.” Although the network doesn’t offer any info as to what those real-life crimes are, outlets such as Deadline and the British Comedy Guide have pointed out that there are a some notable similarities between The Curse’s plot and the notorious 1983 Brinks-Mat robbery at Heathrow.

Like the group of petty criminals in The Curse, the real-life gang involved in the 1983 robbery (led by Brian Robinson and Mickey McAvoy) got much more than they bargained for when they broke into the Brinks-Mat warehouse. They arrived expecting to steal around £3 million in cash but instead made off with £26 million worth of gold and diamonds.

In addition, the family connections among the Brinks-Mat gang seem to be reflected in The Curse also. In the series, gang member Sidney (played by Steve Stamp) is a security guard at the depot where the robbery takes place. His sister, Natasha (Emer Kenny), is married to Albert Fantino (Allan Mustafa), another gang member. As crime site Crime+Investigation notes, there was a similar set up with the Brinks-Mat group. “Inside help was provided [for the real-life 1983 robbery] by Anthony Black, a Brinks Mat security guard who happened to be living with Brian Robinson’s sister at the time.”

Finally – and perhaps most importantly – the on-screen story mirrors the Brinks-Mat robbery in terms of what happened to the gang after the crime took place. In the weeks, months, and years following their £26 million heist, Robinson and McAvoy’s crew dealt with a series of unfortunate events. As the series’ title suggests, The Curse sees a similar thing happen to its fictional gang. But you’ll have to watch the show to find out exactly what we mean by that.

The Curse premieres on Feb. 6, 2022, at 10 p.m. on Channel 4.

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‘The Curse’ future confirmed: Will there be a a second season?

Channel 4 has revealed if The Curse will be returning for more episodes.

Season 1 followed a gang of hopeless small time crooks who, through their own stupidity and poor judgement, find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest gold heists in history.

The Curse was a big hit with audiences and critics alike, with The Independent‘s 5-star review saying the “retro heist sitcom is so good that it’ll blow the bloody doors off.”

“A sublime crime caper with an unfeasibly brilliant cast,” wrote The Guardian, while Radio Times called it “a terrific piece of television that serves as both an uproarious comedy and a compelling heist show in its own right.”

It’s now been announced that the show has been renewed for a second season!

Joe Hullait, Commissioning Executive at Channel 4 commented: “We’re so excited that this comedy supergroup are returning for another instalment of The Curse and cannot wait to see what exile in Spain looks like for the gang. It’s going to be comedy gold.”

Writer Tom Davis added: “We’ve been blown away by the response to the first series. Excited to be upping the ante and heading back to the 80s for some fun in the sun. ESPANA BABY.”

Season 2 will rejoin the gang 18 months on from the dramatic airport escape, arrest, and murderous ending of Season 1’s finale.

The official synopsis for Season 2 reads: “It’s 1985 with Albert (Allan Mustafa), Tash (Emer Kenny) and Sidney (Steve Stamp) now residing in the sunny Costa Del Sol, recently dubbed the Costa Del Crime, a safe haven for UK criminals during this period due to the lack of extradition treaty between British and Spanish governments meaning they were totally untouchable.

“Albert and Tash have invested the money from the gold in a dream restaurant and hotel business, whilst Sidney under the new alias ‘Andrew’ runs a bar on the beach. Meanwhile, Big Mick (Tom Davis) is in prison awaiting trial, very much enjoying the fame that follows now being officially associated with the biggest gold heist in history and Phil ‘The Captain’ Pocket (Hugo Chegwin) is dead.

“In the shadows, frustrated Detectives Saunders and Thread, who are powerless to make arrests, have no choice but to go deep undercover in Spain to gather evidence on the whereabouts of the golden haul.

“What becomes quickly evident is that Spain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The stakes are higher, the gangsters are scarier, and the vultures are beginning to circle. Behind the cocktails around the pool and the paradise façade the calamitous gang have very much got out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“The Curse takes hold in the Spanish heat and it’s a guessing game who will get out alive.”

The Curse is loosely based on an infamous 1983 robbery where six men raided a depot near one of London’s airports thinking they’d walk away with £50,000 in cash, only to stumble across seven thousand bars of gold, with a street value of tens of millions.

In the same week that The Curse began filming last summer, the BBC coincidentally also announced a drama series based on the exact same story!

BBC One’s The Gold will star Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), Charlotte Spencer (Sanditon), Jack Lowden (War and Peace), and Stefanie Martini (The Last Kingdom).

The Curse is expected to return on Channel 4 in the UK in early 2023.

A tenth season of Father Brown is currently filming, but it’s unclear if Emer Kenny will be reprising her role as Penelope “Bunty” Windermere in the new episodes.

The Curse review: Retro heist sitcom is so good that it’ll blow the bloody doors off

“Be careful what you wish for” is the motto of The Curse, Channel 4’s excellent new retro sitcom/crime caper. Idiots trying to be big time criminals and messing everything up is a long-honoured trope of British comedy, and it has served a very lengthy stretch dating back from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, through Minder and The Italian Job to The Ladykillers and beyond. The Curse is very much in that tradition, and adds a nice, novel twist, in that the rather valuable pile of 7,000 gold bars the thieves stumble upon during a routine warehouse raid carries a deadly curse, on a par with the one that befell Lord Carnarvon, who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun. So, just like with The Ladykillers or Goodfellas, we start making mental bets about who’s going to get whacked first.

It’s fun, then, and you can’t really cast a better group of fools than the crew from People Just Do Nothing, most of whom turn up here. We have Steve Stamp once again as the slow idiot, playing Sidney, the man on the inside in the warehouse; Allan Mustafa, the MC Grindah-style gobby but wimpish idiot; and Hugo Chegwin as the pretentious idiot, Phil, who wears a trilby as some sort of tribute to the Krays’ gang, drives a Ford Consul with an early car phone, and styles himself, absurdly, as “The Captain”.

The mixture is inestimably enhanced by Tom Davis, a man who can raise a laugh just by standing up. Never in the history of human comedy has a man deployed a beer belly to greater effect. Obscenely dressed in garish tank tops and, I think, using string to hold his trousers up, Davis is the supreme imbecile, the ultimate “ugly ape” to his fellow conspirators. Davis is also co-writer, with James de Frond (who directs as well). The humour is less intensely driven than in People Just Do Nothing and more like Davis’s much-missed Murder in Successville, and has similar sharp wit.

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But that slower pace just means you have a little more time to savour the superb period touches, themselves amusing – punters smoking Embassy Regal in the pub, the “firm” hanging out in a snooker hall, a Safeways carrier bag, beer mugs with handles, the Breville toasted sandwich maker, Bullseye, antique words such as “plonker”, plus cameo appearances by Mrs Thatcher and an unmistakable whiff of 1980s naked greed. The music is evocative – “Everything Counts” by Depeche Mode and The The’s “Uncertain Smile” bring back some memories.

There is just one scene, of the robbery itself, that features realistic violence, thanks to our idiot criminal masterminds roping in a couple of genuine hard men (Abraham Popoola, Peter Ferdinando) who are only semi-idiotic. It all gets a bit testy, with shooters and everything, but gives the drama some necessary tension and usefully counterpoints the slapstick and wordplay.

Unlike the not-that-lovable rogues, the creators of The Curse clearly have a very good idea of what they’re about, and their plan is seamlessly executed to highly amusing effect. They deserve a reward for recovering such an impressive haul of comedy gold.

Furthermore, the user interface and overall user experience have been criticized. Some users have reported difficulties in navigating the platform and finding specific shows or episodes. This can lead to a frustrating viewing experience, as subscribers may have to spend more time searching for content rather than actually watching it. Lastly, there have been concerns about the long-term sustainability of BritBox. With the increasing competition in the streaming market, it is unclear if the platform will be able to compete with larger players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Without a continuous influx of new content and innovative features, BritBox may struggle to retain its subscriber base and remain relevant in the ever-evolving streaming landscape. In conclusion, while BritBox caters to fans of British television, it has attracted criticism for its limited content, pricing structure, user interface, and its long-term viability in the streaming market. While it may still be a useful platform for those seeking specific British shows, it may not be able to compete with other streaming services in terms of variety and overall user experience..

Reviews for "Breaking the Cycle: Can BritBox Escape the Curse?"

1. Peter - 1/5 stars - I was really disappointed with "The Curse" on BritBox. The plot seemed interesting at first, with a supernatural twist, but it quickly became convoluted and confusing. The pacing was all over the place, with scenes that dragged on for too long and others that were rushed and didn't make any sense. The characters were underdeveloped and their actions felt forced. Overall, I found this show to be a total waste of time and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

2. Emily - 2/5 stars - I had high hopes for "The Curse" on BritBox, but it just fell flat for me. The story had potential, with a small town being haunted by a curse, but the execution was lacking. The acting was subpar and I couldn't really connect with any of the characters. The special effects were not impressive and at times felt cheesy. Additionally, the plot twists were predictable and didn't deliver any real surprises. I wanted to like this show, but unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations.

3. Sarah - 2/5 stars - "The Curse" on BritBox had an intriguing concept, but it failed to deliver. The storyline was scattered and didn't flow smoothly, making it difficult to follow. The acting was hit-or-miss, with some performances being decent while others felt forced. The overall atmosphere of the show was supposed to be eerie and suspenseful, but it instead came across as awkward and contrived. I struggled to stay engaged throughout the series and felt let down by the lackluster finale. I wouldn't recommend "The Curse" to anyone looking for a gripping paranormal drama.

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