forelock-tugging and factual
education — although for a
piece of jubilee programming
there was a surprising amount
of regicide chat.
We learnt that the current
jewels date to the Restoration,
when a new collection had to
be found to replace everything
Cromwell had melted down.
Diamonds were easier to come
by after the French revolution,
when all the ones previously
owned by guillotined nobility
flooded on to the market.
If you were the Queen this
might have felt more horror
movie than monarchist
celebration. For any non-heads
of state who fancied being
terrified, there was series four
of Stranger Things.
After a shaky series two,
the Netflix show has picked
itself up. It’s 1986 and the kids
of Hawkins, Indiana, are now
partway to adulthood and
being pulled in different
directions. That provides lots
of opportunities to have the
cast buddy up in new ways
(good-girl Nancy forming an
alliance with the sardonic
lesbian Robin) as well as old
favourites (Steve Harrington
and Dustin 4eva). And some
of the kids of Hawkins are
literally being pulled apart by
the latest demonic presence.
These deaths are a step up in
unpleasantness from the peril
of previous series, and tap into
1980s Satanic Panic. ( Joseph
Quinn is a great addition to
the cast as Eddie Munson, a
Dungeons & Dragons player
who ends up out of his depth
when the game gets real.)
Stranger Things isn’t just
referencing pop culture now.
It has its own powerful
mythology out of which any
manner of otherworldly
things can happen. But the
show is still, at root, all about
the feelings: a flicker between
high-school exes, a moment of
understanding between two
distanced friends. If you’re
going to live in the past —
and apparently TV was
determined to this week —
better to do it with characters
who won’t spit on you. cCrooked charm The jailed
fraudster Giovanni Di StefanoMy father the swindler
Giovanni Di Stefano is a
convicted fraudster, awaiting
extradition to Italy while
serving a 14-year term at Her
Majesty’s pleasure. He is also
the subject of an intriguing
new podcast series, Swindler.
Saviour. Mobster. Spy?
The name may sound
familiar. In the early 2000s
the brash Di Stefano gained
notoriety as the Devil’s
Advocate, a man champing
to defend the indefensible in
court. Think Saddam Hussein
and Slobodan Milosevic.
The podcaster Calum
McCrae’s skilfully woven yarn
begins outside the Royal
Courts of Justice in 2003, with
Di Stefano revelling in his
overturning of the rogue
millionaire property investor
Nicholas van Hoogstraten’s
conviction for manslaughter
on a technicality. This tubby,
balding, Italian-born,
English-raised braggadocio,
speaking more like an East
End geezer than a plummy
QC, had just royally
embarrassed the British legal
establishment. And the most
mortifying aspect: despite Di
Stefano’s grandiose claims, he
has no legal training.
What Di Stefano does have
is chutzpah and an undeniably
colourful past. In the early
1990s he went to Hollywood
and tried to buy MGM Studios.
Then he fled to war-torn
Yugoslavia. In the Serbian
kleptocracy of Belgrade he
associated with Milosevic and
became best friends with the
notorious mobster warlord
Zeljko Raznatovic, better
known as Arkan. Di Stefano’s
eldest son, Michael, recalls
visiting his father and new
family in Belgrade in 1997, and
it “being like Goodfellas”.
With Arkan, Di Stefano
purchased control of a Serbian
football team, FK Obilic, and
later bought and bankrupted
an Italian team, Campobasso.
He also tried to buy Dundee
FC and Norwich City. Oh, and
in a further side hustle as amusic producer, he launched
the career of the Italian pop
star JustCarmen, and even
released his own covers
album. “You couldn’t make it
up,” says Charlotte Eager, a
journalist who once profiled
him. “Although he did.”
This is also the tale of a
son trying to fathom a
charming but flawed father.
An overriding question for
McCrae and Michael Di
Stefano is: how did Giovanni
pack so much in — and why?
Even accepting that he is a
fantasist, fraudster and
fabulist, was there ever some
higher invention? Might he at
some point, for example, have
been working as a security
services’ asset or informer?
“There’s much to be
cautious about GDS,” his
pompous barrister, David
Martin-Sperry, says. “But he
doesn’t live in a total fantasy
world.” Martin-Sperry
recounts how, at the start of
GDS’s 2013 trial, “someone
from the intelligence services
walked into Southwark Crown
Court and spoke to the judge”.
McCrae tells a riveting,
problematic story
entertainingly, trying
throughout (without entirely
succeeding) not to fall for his
subject’s crooked charm.
Because, however good the
stories, you have to question
the moral compass of
someone who would be best
man to Arkan. Even behind
bars Di Stefano seems to bethriving: he’s one of our most
popular inmates, a prison
guard tells McCrae.
Assume Nothing (BBC
Sounds) also avoids
certainties. This is a Radio
Ulster show that often finds
novel approaches to
problematic subjects. The
latest eight-part series is a
dramatised memoir of a
Northern Irish Special Branch
officer who, in the 1970s at the
height of the Troubles, ran a
network of IRA informers.
I often have issues with
hoary audio dramatisations
of true events, but this is well
executed. There is gallows
humour and begrudging
admiration for the enemy,
but what is conveyed vividly
is the day-to-day attrition of
those times.
The prevailing theory
about the popularity of
detective stories is that they
give us Manichean certainties:
heroes and villains, turmoil
then resolution. This is more
the style of Scotland Yard
Confidential (Spotify
Original), a new British true
crime series revisiting famous
investigations such as the
Hatton Garden heist and Cora
Crippen’s murder. The actor
John Hopkins gives it a full
“You’re going down, son”
Sweeney-style narration.
A pairing to this could be
Smoking Gun. Co-presented
by the actress Romola Garai
and the forensic scientist
Tracy Alexander, it revisits
crime scenes where
improvements in forensics
mean everyday items have
become key to solving crimes.
The first case is that of
Christopher Laverack, a
nine-year-old from Hull who
went missing from his
half-sister’s home in 1984, in
the time that her husband,
Steve, had popped out to buy
him some crisps. Garai
narrates in a restrained
manner, but the script has
penny dreadful tendencies.
Steve does not just come
home to find the front door
open and Christopher gone,
but rushes upstairs “with
dread consuming every bone
in his body”. Which, frankly,
sounds more like Dr Crippen’s
area of expertise. cPATRICIA
NICOL
Growing up with a conman straight out of Goodfellas
| RADIO & PODCASTS
OLI SCARFF/GETTY IMAGES5 June 2022 13