Netflix s This Is a Robbery Review: Thrilling Art Heist Docuseries Is an Embarrassment of Riches
An infamous Boston caper makes for great TV Kelly Connolly
Anne Hawley,
This Is a Robbery: The World s Biggest Art Heist Netflix
If the collected works of Ben Affleck have taught us anything, it s that Boston crimes just hit differently. One of the city s most infamous unsolved mysteries gets the spotlight in new Netflix docuseries
This Is a Robbery: The World s Biggest Art Heist, which digs into the 1990 robbery of Boston s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Packed with a highbrow-lowbrow blend of art history, gritty mafia drama, and Boston accents, it s a story that seems made for the movies, but the deeper the series goes, the more the truth feels stranger than fiction. One episode alone features stories of gruesome mob decapitations alongside a lesson on how Rembrandt s paintings interact with the beholder. You don t have to be a true crime devotee to find something thril
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An FBI photograph of the crime scene after the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery show empty frames laying on the floor Courtesy of Netflix
In the movies, the ruling maxim is “print the legend”. After 30 years of investigations of the theft of 13 works valued at more than $500m from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the legend is still all there is to print.
So we see in
This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist, a four-part documentary series on the Gardner theft now streaming on Netflix. The hyperbolic subtitle, like the oft-used adjective “legendary”, is now part of Gardner lore. The series still makes for a head-scratching unsolved mystery for the vast Netflix audience that is new to the cold case. An for the general public, it helps that this true crime tale devolves into yet another Boston mob saga.
Review: This is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist, directed by Colin Barnicle.
After dreaming for many years of visiting Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, I was surprised by its dour presence when I finally arrived on its doorstep. The original building presented a rather austere face to the world, its stolid facade dwarfing an unobtrusive entrance. However, once inside, my every longed-for fantasy was realised.
The internal courtyard glowed with light sucked down from the glass ceiling. Palms and exotic ferns flourished in this hothouse environment. Visitors stood in awe it looked like a Venetian palace, rooted like a tropical orchid in a frost-bitten landscape. In every room, masterpieces softly glowed within their gilt frames; antique furniture filled each nook, vases, and objects d’art on every surface. It was magical.
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