{"id":667436,"date":"2026-05-13T04:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T04:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/667436\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T04:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T04:10:13","slug":"steve-coogan-stars-in-british-crime-drama-inspired-by-true-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/667436\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Coogan stars in British crime drama inspired by true events"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Legends \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

Told in a succinct six episodes, Legends is a very British take on the international crime drama \u2013 imagine The French Connection remade by the Minder crew. It\u2019s the early 1990s, heroin overdoses are surging, and an under-siege Margaret Thatcher needs a win. The solution? Posters asking \u201cCan you offer more?\u201d in the tearooms belonging to Her Majesty\u2019s Customs. Undercover investigators are to be recruited from the baggage inspectors and dirty magazine investigators, to infiltrate murderous drug syndicates. Training lasts three weeks.<\/p>\n

\"SteveSteve Coogan stars as Don in Legends.Netflix<\/p>\n

The show is very loosely based on historic events. It\u2019s \u201cinspired\u201d by the memoir of Guy Stanton<\/a>, who spent 11 years working undercover for Customs targeting drug importers. The Guy Stanton here, played by Tom Burke, is an unfulfilled Customs officer who is one of the few \u2013 alongside Kate (Hayley Squires) and Bailey (Aml Ameen) \u2013 to pass the screening process run by veteran agent Don Clarke (Steve Coogan). Sardonic and counter-intuitive, Don promises his graduates the greatest challenge of their lives, albeit without a per diem.<\/p>\n

Legends is not a complicated procedural. If you want one related to British criminal history, see creator Neil Forsyth\u2019s previous show The Gold<\/a>, which uses a daring 1983 armed heist to explore institutional corruption and social struggle. This is a smash and grab operation, told with telling humour and constant risk. If the undercover agents, divided between Liverpool and London, make one mistake with their false identities \u2013 their legends \u2013 they face instant execution.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, the agents infiltrate vicious drug networks with surprising ease, but Forsyth is such an accomplished storyteller that you don\u2019t have time to stress-test plausibility. Some creators would spend the entire first episode on the selection and training process \u2013 Forsyth gets it sorted in 15 minutes of screen time.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean that the characters don\u2019t have a wellspring of motivation. Legends is a series about ordinary people finding a purpose by reaching for the extraordinary, even if they risk \u2013 particularly Guy \u2013 getting lost in the role.<\/p>\n

With a chef\u2019s kiss period soundtrack (The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays), the limited series develops sharply effective portraits of characters who could be gangster cliches. Johnny Harris is immense as Liverpool enforcer Eddie McKee, questioning what he\u2019s done to his hometown. There\u2019s no commentary on the repetitive struggle of a war on drugs, but authority figures get set straight as the nobodies defy the somebodies.<\/p>\n

\"AmlAml Ameen as Bailey and Hayley Squires as Kate in Legends.Netflix<\/p>\n

At the centre of it is Coogan, whose droll concern is hilarious and eventually moving. The comic actor does a cracking Michael Caine impression<\/a>, but with Legends he\u2019s mastered a Michael Caine role.<\/p>\n

Legends is streaming on Netflix now.<\/p>\n

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\"CraigCraig Mathieson<\/a> is a TV, film and music writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-667436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}