By DAVID LAWRENCE
This is the show that raised eyebrows in Britain over cash for criminals. Was it ethical for the BBC to pay thieves and murderers for their recollections?
Perhaps not. But for entertainment it was money well spent.
The three-parter began unpromisingly last week with various people offering various theories on the attraction of gambling, none of them (the theories) very interesting.
Over the three parts there are also plenty of gambling-wrecked-my-life confessionals and - at the other end of the emotional spectrum - stories of the high life, with Dom Perignon flowing in the best hotels and millions won in hazes of better-than-sex euphoria.
The recitals eventually become tedious, each in their own way, but the programme never could. It has too many characters.
Last week there were two priests, one offering his congregation racing tips after Mass, the other blessing slot machines. Then we met The Man Who Would Bet On Anything. To prove himself, he unbuttoned his shirt.
There, incongruous but not unattractive, were the breasts someone unwisely wagered he would not have implanted. "Feel like a million bucks, my little babies here."
He seemed a well-balanced individual next to some of the thugs who used to run Las Vegas.
Nicky "the Crow" Caramandi and Joe "Dogs" Jannuzzi came over like caricatures of Mob heavies with their shades and stories of dangling debtors over lions cages. "I'm sorry I was a mobster," said one. "I should have been maybe a plumber."
Better lines came from their English counterparts, recalling the 60s heyday of the London underworld when gangs controlled gambling.
Interviews with "Mad" Frankie Fraser and Kray associate Eric Mason were spliced to produce a sequence Monty Python would have been proud of.
Frankie: Well, our car arrived, I kidnapped him, slung him in, took him to our one-armed bandit headquarters and put an axe all over him.
Eric: I could hear people saying, 'Chop his hands off, chops his legs off.'
Frankie: If I remember rightly it went right through his fingers into his head.
Eric: There was a hole in my head. I know definitely I had brain damage.
Frankie: It was a lovely axe. I lost it. If I had bought it at Woolworths I wouldn't have minded. But it was a cracker. I bought it at Harrods.
As well as black comedy there was serious investigation of the various tricks casinos use to part punters and their money. Certain odours, for instance, serve to attract to low-paying slot machines while others repel from the big payouts.
The trickery can work in reverse. One of a group of very smart students, who used Newton's laws of physics to calculate where the little silver ball is going to come to rest, had this advice: "Never play roulette without wearing a computer in your shoe."
Tonight's episode, Easy Money, has perhaps the best character of all - Howard Hughes, millionaire movie-maker, entrepreneur and aviation pioneer, who effectively bought Las Vegas and made it respectable.
He also expanded the concept of anti-social when he said, in 1959, that he didn't want to see anyone again.
Infotainment is a dirty word in some circles but High Stakes shows how well the mix can work.
* BBC Reports: High Stakes, Prime, 8.35 pm
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