After the huge success of The Gold, Netflix is making its own true crime drama based on real events by the man who created the BBC hit.
The Gold, which boasted an all-star cast including Hugh Bonneville and Slow Horses actor Jack Lowden, told the story of how London cops chased the gold stolen in the infamous 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery. Now from the same writer, Neil Forsyth, Netflix is making a new six-part drama inspired by another amazing real-life criminal investigation.
Based on extensive research and interviews with those involved, Legends tells the story of how British customs officials were sent undercover to bust massive drug gangs in 1990s Britain.
Neil Forsyth said: “I’m very excited to be able to tell this incredible story, along with everyone at Tannadice Pictures. I think Legends is a fascinating, gripping, unknown British story that deserves to be told in full. I’m delighted that Netflix agreed.”
Teasing the plot, Netflix says: “In the early 1990s, at the height of the international war on drugs, the government agency in charge of Britain’s borders, Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, realized that they were losing the battle against drug smuggling. Their solution was extraordinary. In a top-secret operation, a small team of British Customs employees were sent undercover. Their task — to infiltrate Britain’s most dangerous drug gangs.
“They were not trained spies, they had no undercover experience. These were ordinary men and women, plucked from ordinary lives around the U.K, put through a basic training regime then told to build new identities in the criminal underworld. These identities were called Legends.”
News of Legends comes as the BBC makes the second series of The Gold. Teasing the plot for The Gold season 2, the BBC says: “Following the conviction of some of those involved in the theft and handling of the Brink’s-Mat gold, the police (Hugh Bonneville, Charlotte Spencer, Emun Elliot) realised that those criminals only ever had half of it.
“Series two explores what happened to the other half, and the criminal fortune it created. As the police investigation continues, it becomes a tense, high-stakes journey into international money laundering and organised crime, while the police embark on dramatic manhunts as they desperately try to solve the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Metropolitan Police.”
We don’t have a release date yet for Legends or The Gold season 2.