TV Review: Hidden Assets is back for a second series — but it needs to wake up
Simone Kirby returns as Bibi Melnick in season two of Hidden Assets. Picture: James Pierce/AcornTV
(RTÉ One Sunday and RTÉ Player) needs to wake up.
The thriller is back for a second series but it’s short of thrills and long on beige dialogue.
The idea in season one was sound. CAB, the Criminal Assets Bureau, was working with the Belgian Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU) investigating some lark that stretched from Antwerp Port to Limerick. There where Colombians, suicide bombers, hidden diamonds, a few shootings and intrigue around an Irish businesswoman called Bibi Melnick, who got involved in all this to launder her father’s assets.
Move on a year and Bibi, convincingly shady as played by Simone Kirby, is back again for season two, having escaped jail after co-operating with the cross-border cops. Emer Berry (played by Angeline Ball) is gone from CAB for this season, replaced by Claire Wallace (Nora-Jane Noone).
Meanwhile back in Antwerp, Belgian cop Christian De Jong is back scowling like Tom Waits and over-reacting to everything. At least he has some action to over-react to when a suspect with knowledge about the spate of suicide bombs is assassinated as De Jong accompanies him ‘downtown’ for a spot of questioning.
Back in Ireland, the show was falling asleep. Some flattering shots of Limerick city aside, most of the action took place between five characters in what looked like the regional office of an IT recruitment company. The big news here was CAB’s computer network had been compromised and the hackers wanted a chunk of Bitcoin from them if they ever wanted to see their top-secret files again. Enter D.I. Moore from the cybercrime unit, to explain about VPNs and backdoors and partially corrupt files and it was like being back in a data security lecture in college.
There followed a lot of dialogue between the five characters in the soulless office, which had the feeling of a read-through rehearsal rather than the finished product. It explained, at some length, that the files for the case involving Bibi Melnick had been corrupted beyond repair, and that the corresponding files at the CTU in Belgium had been hacked as well.
At this point, I was down to comparing the office furniture in Limerick and Antwerp. The Belgians, with their northern European eye for funky colours and fabrics, operated out of an office that could win a prize in an interior decorating magazine. The Irish meanwhile, were stuck in a bland open-plan affair with nothing but brown and grey to inspire their fight against organised crime.
Meanwhile, back in the story, Bibi’s car was fire-bombed at a service station, to remind us that there were people out to get her. I didn’t care about Bibi enough to care about this, and she is one of the more rounded characters in the show.
Hidden Assets is in the same vein as shows like and but it’s not in the same league because there isn’t enough time to get to know the over-loaded set of characters. Episode one is dull dialogue in grey offices, with the odd explosion to keep us awake. Hopefully, it will improve.
