{"id":572244,"date":"2026-05-08T03:17:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/572244\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T03:17:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:17:20","slug":"steve-coogan-excels-in-netflix-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/572244\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Coogan Excels in Netflix Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the parlance of undercover operatives, a \u201clegend\u201d is the false identity one concocts to infiltrate a criminal network. \u201cYour legend has to come from you, or it won\u2019t work. Your legend has to be part of you, or it won\u2019t work,\u201d explains Don (Steve Coogan<\/a>), a British customs agent charged with training a group of amateur spies to infiltrate heroin rings in the twilight of the Thatcher era. \u201cAnd when legends<\/a> don\u2019t work, people die.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLegends\u201d is also the name of the compact, compelling Netflix series Don kicks off by assembling a ragtag crew of secretaries, airport security officers and other understimulated misfits from his agency\u2019s ranks for the mission at hand. Created and written by Neil Forsyth (\u201cThe Gold\u201d), \u201cLegends\u201d is loosely based on a real set of customs operations in the late 1980s that intercepted several tons of narcotics with limited budget and resources. But together with directors Brady Hood and Julian Holmes as well as a uniformly strong cast,\u00a0led by a gravel-voiced Coogan and Tom Burke<\/a> (\u201cFuriosa\u201d) as Don\u2019s star pupil, Forsyth makes \u201cLegends\u201d a gripping tale of found potential and assumed identity.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a show of its brisk, no-nonsense pace, \u201cLegends\u201d has Don whittle a busful of applicants down to just four recruits in the first 15 minutes of the premiere. (And that timestamp includes an economical cold open that cuts between two overdose deaths at opposite ends of the class spectrum, establishing why Thatcher has chosen to tackle the drug crisis with such urgency.) Guy is a working-class Londoner whose wife supports his frustrated ambitions. He\u2019s joined by Erin (Jasmine Blackborow), a clerical genius with a gift for reading documents; Kate (Hayley Squires), a Northerner who wants to fight the damage drugs have inflicted on her home region; and Bailey (Aml Ameen), a son of immigrants whose adopted country is blinded by racism to his considerable ability. Having lucked into an opportunity for rewarding work and excitement, all four intend to make the most of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tDon divides his team between heroin\u2019s two main domestic distribution centers: Liverpool, where the decimation of dockside industrial work has turned an entire generation toward narcotics and crime, and London, where a Kurdish gang based in the Turkish neighborhood of Green Lanes imports product from Pakistan. (The second episode\u2019s upbeat opening sequence follows an opium crop\u2019s supply chain from harvest to processing to Turkey to the U.K.) Kate and Bailey take Liverpool, where they recruit informants and plant sources in pursuit of local kingpin Declan Carter (Tom Hughes). Guy gets sent to Green Lanes on his own, apart from a charming Greek ex-con (Gerald Kyd) who Don gets out of jail in exchange for an introduction to the Kurds.<\/p>\n

\n\tGuy\u2019s legend, who he speaks about in the third person like a separate entity with \u201chis\u201d own thoughts and feelings, is a former legitimate businessman with a chip on his shoulder post-divorce. Per Don\u2019s instructions, however, Guy\u2019s personality and mannerisms don\u2019t change when he\u2019s in character. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been waiting my entire life for this,\u201d he tells Don. All the spy fiction clich\u00e9s about losing oneself in the lie get bandied about, but Burke\u2019s capable performance gives the sense of a man awakened rather than transformed.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the United States, the War on Drugs is mostly remembered as a quagmire, one that fueled the social blight of mass incarceration rather than address the root cause of mass substance abuse. \u201cLegends\u201d is more optimistic about its characters\u2019 accomplishments than, say, \u201cThe Wire,\u201d and \u2014 as indicated by Coogan\u2019s casting \u2014\u00a0has a sense of humor to match. Scenes where the agents come in from the field to snipe at one another in a makeshift office have a chemistry that would seem like a durable blueprint for future seasons if the story wasn\u2019t finite. But \u201cLegends\u201d still has plenty to say about the declining fortunes of middle-class England as presided over by Thatcher, plus the meddling of career-motivated politicians in dirty work of actual law enforcement. Alex Jennings of \u201cThe Crown\u201d plays a perfectly posh Home Secretary pressuring Don to move up his timeline for a major party conference.<\/p>\n

\n\tMostly, though, \u201cLegends\u201d takes the same evident pleasure in risk-taking and adventure as its protagonists. Guy\u2019s long con of ingratiating himself into the Green Lanes operation makes his arc the fullest expression of the show\u2019s namesake concept, but his colleagues do stints as property developers, German tourists and shady lawyers, adopting aliases and even going overseas as the work demands. It\u2019s all so fun you can forget the deadly stakes of the assignment at hand \u2014 which is precisely the point.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll six episodes of \u201cLegends\u201d are now streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n

\n\tCorrection: An earlier version of this article misidentified the character Erin and the actor who plays her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the parlance of undercover operatives, a \u201clegend\u201d is the false identity one concocts to infiltrate a criminal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,7310,55728,195801,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-572244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-legends","tag-steve-coogan","tag-tom-burke","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}