Director Colin Barnicle contributes to Boston pop culture lore with This Is a Robbery: The World’s Greatest Art Heist, a four-part Netflix docuseries about a March 1990 theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Each episode connects the dots through hard evidence and logic, yet the logistics of the crime itself betray common sense. Thieves stole 13 pieces of art valued collectively at $500 million but literally ripped famous paintings from their frames, like wild beasts looking for a big snack.

Producers of Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film The Irishman funded This Is a Robbery, which results in a rousing mafia-themed mystery about loudmouth mobsters with questionable motivations. On St. Patrick’s Day 1990, two men pulled off the world’s greatest art heist in just 81 minutes, and left with iconic pieces such as Rembrandt van Rijn’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” (1633), Johannes Vermeer’s “The Concert” (1664) and Édouard Manet’s “Chez Tortoni” (1875). Barnicle explores the potential complicity of disgruntled security guard Richard Abath but then shifts to theories about well-known art thief Myles J. Connor and the New England Italian mob. This Is a Robbery’s biggest ah-ha moments include The Boston Globe journalist Stephen Kurkjian, a founding member of the Spotlight investigative team who emerges as the most authoritative interviewee.

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This Is a Robbery’s narrative structure reminds of Hieronymus Bosch’s iconic triptych “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” Barnicle presents the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as a hidden paradise within Boston, and anchors the storyline with a tale of absolute chaos amongst various organized crime factions. Most of the key suspects passed away in the immediate years after the 1990 heist, which positions the dearly departed as part of a Hellish canvas in the docuseries’ final act, much like the one that Bosch depicts in his right panel of “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” This Is a Robbery implies that temptation and pride inspired an Italian mobster to orchestrate the focal theft, and that the stolen artwork may have been lost in the brave new world of the Boston underground, a place where gangsters used paintings as Get Out of Jail Free cards.