Gold minds
As The Gold returns for a second season, DQ visits the set of the factual drama to find out how the fallout from the Brink’s-Mat heist in S1 is affecting both the police and the plotters, and how writer Neil Forsyth sought to balance fact and fiction.
Charlotte Spencer and Emun Elliott are bickering about food – not an unusual topic on a TV set. “We just did a scene where Jennings is annoyed about you making a fuss at breakfast,” says Spencer, sitting on a pleather sofa at Twickenham Studios on a chilly February morning, a few days before the shoot decamps to warmer climes.
“Brightwell makes a fair point,” Elliott retorts. “They go to this greasy spoon where the option is black pudding or potato scone. You can’t have them both. It should be black pudding or haggis, surely? I stand by that.” He chuckles. “Our relationship, as you can see, is very similar in real life.”
The first season of Neil Forsyth’s The Gold, about the Brink’s-Mat heist, when six London villains stole £26m of gold bullion from a Heathrow warehouse in November 1983, was driven by a stranger-than-fiction story. But it was rooted in character – the unorthodox investigating trio of Nicky Jennings (Spencer), Tony Brightwell (Elliott) and their boss Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville) and a group of crooks both blue and white collar, frantically figuring out how to launder the takings.
In season two, which debuts on BBC One and BBC iPlayer this Sunday, Forsyth picks up the story in the late 1980s, as patience wears thin with Boyce’s sputtering investigation – their operation has been downsized and now operates from a dingy central London basement – and foes both old and new hove into view.
“Series two is about how Brink’s-Mat still defined these people even when they were trying to escape it,” explains Forsyth, “and the escalating pressures put on them as a result. A lot of the creative licence on The Gold is about simplifying a very complicated story, so you have to do your research and know the story inside out, then your conscience is clear. There are legal restrictions, because if people didn’t get convicted, it’s quite hard for me to put that in the show, and sensitivities around the impact of events on certain family members and so on, so you have to be careful not to be salacious or exploitative.
“We set up quite boldly at the end of the first series when the police realised they’d inadvertently only investigated half the gold. A second series is always about bringing forward the interesting, unresolved things and piling on big new storylines as well.”
As the trail winds out to the Isle of Man and Spain, South America and the British Virgin Islands, a familiar quarry returns in John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer (Tom Cullen), the West Country gold smelter who successfully defended himself in court before laundering his portion of the spoils in a Tenerife timeshare scam. Emboldened by outwitting the police and judiciary, his confidence has expanded alongside his ego, sowing the seeds of his downfall.
“One of the big things was knowing there was a potential season two,” says Cullen. “It allowed me to mark out an arc for John, starting with somebody apprehensive who allows the gold to infect him like a poison and erode his core. It’s so interesting to see how that level of greed and wealth affects somebody who started with nothing.
“So we rejoin him at the top with a ridiculous private jet, calling himself the King of Tenerife, then other parties start to move in on his turf. He also had a mistress in Tenerife, so he’d fly his wife [played by Stefanie Martini] into Fuerteventura. [It must have been] exhausting to lead that life – I genuinely have no idea how he did it. On top of that, he has a cocaine addiction…”
A less ostentatious but no less dangerous foe is Sam Spruell’s Charlie Miller, a composite character created from a number of London gangsters believed to have involved themselves in the aftermath of the robbery. In The Gold, Miller has secreted his portion of the loot then fled to Spain to lie low. Believing the heat to have died down, he’s now back to claim it.
“However, the heat has not died down,” Spruell grins. “The embers are still burning and the investigative team comes after him. It’s a chase around the world as he tries to use his ill-gotten gains as a means to go legit and be taken seriously as a financial player. He’s planned carefully and is very determined, but he doesn’t really have the capacity to allow his aspirations to play out in the way he wants.”
Enter Douglas Baxter, chalk to Miller’s cheese and, as played by Joshua Maguire, a wonderful physical and psychological foil to Spruell. A Cambridge-educated lawyer who has done time for drug possession, Baxter has since carved out a lucrative sideline in money-laundering on the Isle of Man.
“He’s not really cut out for the criminal life,” laughs Maguire. “He claims to have been the finest legal mind Cambridge has ever seen, but he’s really an entitled little prick with so many fucking issues – a far less cool character than everyone else. He bears quite a lot of the comedic weight in the show, which is lovely.”
Fortunately for Boyce, his compact team has some extra firepower in Tony Lundy (Stephen Cambell Moore), a cop being nudged towards retirement despite being cleared of corruption resulting from his days working the supergrass network.
“Lundy, like Boyce, is based on a real person,” says Campbell Moore. “Neil spoke to him, and Lundy said we could just tell our story, which was great. We discover him when he’s at what looks like the end of his career, but Boyce picks him up because of his contacts outside normal procedural methods. He’s almost an old-school bounty hunter; getting their target becomes his mission. But there remains this ambiguity, these question marks as to how trustworthy he is.”
“Boyce gives Lundy the benefit of the doubt – he gets results, so everyone’s heading in the same direction, just by different means,” adds Bonneville, who found revelations galore in this second and final season, once again produced by Tannadice Pictures and distributed by All3Media International.
“In season one, we shot in some buildings in docklands that clearly were built on Brink’s-Mat money. This time, I hadn’t quite appreciated the amount that sloshed into the drugs trade and the ecstasy boom via the Caribbean, bankrolled by the likes of Palmer. The impact of this one event in November, the ripple effect across society, is quite remarkable.”
In the meantime, the Canary Islands await, with Elliott planning to take Spencer snorkelling and Campbell Moore barely able to contain his excitement. Has he, well, struck gold? He laughs. “Every other conversation on set is, ‘So, are you looking forward to Tenerife?’”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Rillington Place: A BBC factual drama about notorious serial killer John Christie and the wrongful conviction of Timothy Evans.
The Serpent: This BBC-Netflix coproduction revolves around the real-life crimes of conman and murderer Charles Sobhraj in the 1970s.
White House Farm: ITV’s dramatisation of the infamous White House Farm murders in Essex, focusing on the police investigation and the courtroom drama that followed.
RELATED CONTENT
Smelting pot
Writer Neil Forsyth, director Aneil Karia and the cast of BBC heist drama The Gold reflect on dramatising the true story behind the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery, when six armed men stumbled upon gold bullion worth £26m.
Cancelled out
In a TV studio in west London, DQ meets Douglas is Cancelled stars Hugh Bonneville, Karen Gillan and writer Steven Moffat to hear about the timely themes and issues behind this ITV comedy-drama in which a news presenter falls foul of cancel culture.
In the thick of it
The South Wales town of Newport is the setting for Ar y Ffin (Mudtown), a crime drama that sees a local magistrate and a criminal kingpin brought together in a story about what people will do for their families. DQ gets stuck in with stars Erin Richards, Tom Cullen, producer Hannah Thomas and writers Hannah Daniel and Georgia Lee to find out more.
tagged in: All3Media International, Hugh Bonneville, Neil Forsyth, Stephen Cambell Moore, Tannadice Pictures, The Gold