Must Watch review The Gold

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan review The Gold

A BBC series, where six armed men steal £26m worth of gold from the Brink’s-Mat security depot and set about trying to dispose of the bullion. DCI Brian Boyce sets up a police task force to investigate.

Scott says, ‘the opening scene in this series is really rather grim. It throws you right in the middle of it’

What I like about this series is that it strips away the sexiness of a heist. A couple of weeks ago we reviewed a Netflix heist show [Kaleidoscope]. If you remember that show, it was sexy, it was stylish, it tried to give it this kind of smooth, cool bank heist look and feel, whereas the opening scene in this series is really rather grim. It shows you what the reality is really like.

In the drama, two members of staff were there with a gun pointed in their direction; their addresses were yelled at them to threaten them. Another man couldn’t remember the code to where some of the gold was, so they doused him with petrol and threatened to set him alight if he couldn’t remember the number immediately.

Scott says, ‘I think this cat and mouse game with Brian Boyce has charisma - just his unique style of trying to catch the criminals in this is inherently fascinating’

The cat and mouse game with Brian Boyce (played by Hugh Bonneville) has charisma - just his unique style of trying to catch the criminals in this is inherently fascinating. And I think it’s just the style they’ve done with this, the factual route that they’ve tried to go and take this to. I just think it is a really fascinating story, I really enjoyed this.

Hayley says, ‘sometimes the darker bits of the real story are smoothed over a bit’

It’s like a British gangster movie from the early 80s, which is a great thing. It’s quite an old-fashioned cops and robbers story. All the set design and costumes, and everything being slightly grimy and bleak and the lighting being bad.

The actual robbery happens very early on and then we get the story of how they are trying to turn this gold into something that could be put back on the market, how they were going to launder the money. In a way it’s sort of about the admin of being a robber.

There’s a lot of ‘cigarette acting’ – people giving little speeches while squinting into their own cigarette smoke. It does feel to me, at times, like they're a little bit too in love with the robbers despite the fact that in real life Kenneth Noye was a murderer. Here he gets a speech that makes him sound like he’s Robin Hood. There’s a lot of stuff in this show about the English class system and sometimes the darker bits of the real story are smoothed over a bit just to get that overall point across. But I thought it was a really compelling watch.

The Gold is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds and all other good podcast providers.

This week, the team also reviewed You and The Piano.

Click here to listen to the latest episode.