The Antiques Rogue Show (2009)

Journalist Mark Templeton interviews some of the players in a bizarre true story. On a Bolton housing estate reticent, middle-aged Shaun Greenhalgh created fake paintings and antiques which his elderly parents George and Olive passed off as the real thing, duping the art world out of hundreds of thousands of pounds with their seemingly innocent provenances. After the local museum has paid £400,000 for a fake statue George - despite Shaun's protests that they were getting too ambitious - decided to hit the British Museum with phony Assyrian reliefs. But a spelling mistake on one of them proved to be the family's undoing and Shaun was imprisoned for four and a half years, his parents receiving suspended sentences. Templeton feels sorry for Shaun, an unrecognized talent who figured in a victimless crime, and it is apparent that the author also regards Shaun, with his philosophical observations, in the same light.