Made Up

This is a high-concept, four-episode limited series. A young man enters a life of crime and flukes his way to the top, employing a vast series of disguises and dramatic tactics as he attempts to destroy the crime syndicate whose vile nature he soon comes to despise.

Not only Ryan, but his loathed half-brother, famous gameshow host Danny Diamond, and Danny’s friend Ralph Burley, Viscount of Roth, are addicted to visually extravagant disguises. They are the high-end burglars nicknamed the Grinning Goons, who rob the very rich and aristocratic while concealed by their make-up skills. He first uses them then closes them down, in a crime thriller spiced with black comedy and looming with blood-chilling villains.

Using his natural flair for acting and impersonation, Ryan lays murderous traps for the key members of the crime syndicate, easily outwitting exuberant, role-play-addicted DI Nancy Sweet who loves to masquerade. Ryan eavesdrops on criminal plans as a young mother with baby. He inspects a county lines op as a rat-catcher, cases a jeweller’s as a homeless man and tails villains as a pizza delivery jockey. His talent for disguise is matched only by DI Sweet as she impersonates a sex worker to meet with her Confidential Informer, an American hiker to gain access to a slave farm, a dominatrix to collar two pimps, and more.

Four finished-so-far no-padding screenplays drive the story from one teetering edge to the next as an apprentice villain brings rough justice and makes himself a fortune, and pragmatism and mounting caseloads lead the police to the wrong conclusion but the right justice.