The Gold (BBC1, Sun/Mon, 9pm) was writer Neil Forsyth’s dramatic retelling of the Brinks-Mat bullion robbery in the early 80s, and the police attempts to catch the robbers.
A complex story, involving dozens of south London villains, no-nonsense coppers and posh people brought low by greed, it was a gripping drama and – by all accounts – a faithful retelling of what actually happened.
At the end – spoiler alert – it was revealed that only half of the £23m of gold bullion, cash and diamonds stolen from the Brinks-Mat warehouse on the edge of Heathrow Airport had been recovered. A sum equivalent to around £44m today.
No one really knows what happened to the other half of the loot, which is what series two is concerned with – although according to a caption at the beginning of Sunday’s first episode, what we see is based on theories surrounding the whereabouts of the gold.
Not having to be slavishly attached to what is known, he is free to create a crime caper full of lovely locations, menacing Russian thugs and dialogue which sparks off the screen.
The first episode may give you whiplash as it flits from a tin mine in Cornwall to Tenerife to south London to the British Virgin Islands, but it perfectly assembles the pieces for the rest of the series, setting in train various plotlines to keep the drama bubbling.
The fast pace settles down in episode two, but it never flags or sags, as Hugh Bonneville’s DCS Brian Boyce – obsessed with the robbery and bringing those responsible to justice – battles bureaucracy and budgets, and villain Charlie Miller (Sam Spruell) attempts to clean his share of the Brinks-Mat money.
Meanwhile, crooked lawyers Douglas Baxter (Joshua McGuire) and Logan Campbell (Tom Hughes) set up various nefarious schemes on various islands to launder the cash.
McGuire, in particular, has fantastic fun as Baxter, a man bitterly disappointed with how his life has turned out, with a entire deep fat fryer’s worth of chips on his shoulder.
“First-class degree from Cambridge. Top of my year. One of the finest legal minds of my generation,” he fumes to Miller. “All to sit in this hole, drinking God knows what and being told by yet another Cockney knuckle-dragger that I’m ‘good at cleaning money’.
“I’d be better off driving an effing bus.”
Meanwhile, Forsyth gives DCS Boyce a lovely speech in each episode, which Bonneville clearly loves – one on the special allure of islands to the criminal, and one which closes the first episode and clearly signposts the way the rest of the series will go.
“People will make choices and they will make mistakes,” he tells his team, “and we need to be there when they make them… I don’t know where this ends, but I know that it’s begun.”
Backed up by a brilliant cast, especially Emun Elliott and Charlotte Spencer as two of Boyce’s team, a mismatched buddy cop duo determined not to let their boss down, it rollocks along, powered by that dialogue which fizzes and crackles.
Add to that the late 80s nostalgia hit for people of a certain age – brown glass ashtrays, Stefan Edberg tennis shirts, New Order on the soundtrack – and The Gold ramps everything up to 11.
It’s rare that a second series of anything surpasses the first, but The Gold manages it – freed to explore the myths and legends surrounding the Brinks-Mat case, Forsyth creates a gleaming, sparkling caper and we’re all the richer for it.
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