BBC mini-series ‘The Gold’ dramatises iconic real-life 1980s gold bullion heist
A new mini-series inspired by the true story of the Brink’s-Mat robbery has been announced.
The Gold will dramatise the ‘crime of the century’ and the decades-long chain of events that followed.
Based on extensive research and interviews with the real people involved, the six-part drama has been written by Neil Forsyth (Eric, Ernie & Me) for BBC One.
The Gold will take “a pulsating journey into a 1980’s world awash with cheap money and loosened morals to tell this extraordinary and epic story for the first time in its entirety.”
Piers Wenger, Director of BBC Drama commented: “This is so much more than the story of an armed robbery.”
He added: “The Gold looks beyond the auspices of the theft itself to explore how the case united the criminal underworld with corporate finance, caused personal tragedy and spawned one of the most shocking, influential and mysterious cases in British criminal history.”
Writer and creator Neil Forsyth said: “The story of the Brink’s-Mat gold is a thrilling, surprising and tragic story and I am excited to be able to tell it.”
Forsyth is the creator of the BBC’s mystery-thriller Guilt, which was a big hit in 2019.
Guilt debuts in the US on Sunday 5th September on PBS as part of their Masterpiece Mystery season.
The official synopsis for The Gold reads: “On the 26 November 1983, six armed men broke into the Brink’s-Mat security depot near London’s Heathrow Airport, and inadvertently stumbled across gold bullion worth £26m.
“What started as ‘a typical Old Kent Road armed robbery’ according to detectives at the time, became a seminal event in British criminal history, remarkable not only for the scale of the theft, at the time the biggest in world history, but for its wider legacy.
“The disposal of the bullion caused the birth of large-scale international money laundering, provided the dirty money that helped fuel the London Docklands property boom, united blue and white collar criminals and left controversy and murder in its wake.”
The Gold will premiere in the UK on BBC One in 2022.
Guilt is available on DVD on Amazon.