The Last Panthers

The last Panthers of the title are members of the infamous international network of jewel thieves formed by criminals and soldiers of fortune from the former Yugoslavia. While the “Pink Panthers” are real, this TV miniseries is fiction, a sprawling story that opens on a jewel heist in the French port city of Marseilles where the gang executes a daring daylight robbery but accidentally kills a little girl during the getaway (a first for a group that pointedly does not kill anyone in their heists). While they flee to Serbia to try to sell diamonds that have become too hot to handle, British insurance investigator Naomi Franckom (Samantha Morton) tracks their movements, and driven French-Algerian cop Khalil Rachidi (Tahar Rahim) in Marseilles goes rogue to shake up the underworld of his city and trace the guns used by the gang. What begins as a crime thriller quickly gets tangled up in international politics, corporate corruption, criminal conflicts, and personal stories that reach back to the war in Bosnia, where Franckom served with U.N. peacekeeping forces. That's where she was recruited by her boss and mentor Tom Kendle (John Hurt), a man who keeps his endgame hidden from his investigators. The Last Panthers is an intelligent, dense, demanding series that hopscotches all over Europe. Presenting all six episodes of this 2015 miniseries, which aired stateside on Sundance TV, extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)