The Gold season two review – this thrilling tale of stolen millions is top quality British drama

The Guardian

5 hours ago

At the end of the first series of The Gold, it dawned on the officers of the Met's Flying Squad that for all of their multiple investigations into the infamous Brink's-Mat robbery of 1983, they had only ever been chasing half of the stolen bullion. Arriving two years after its highly entertaining predecessor, series two sets off with an irresistible premise: what exactly happened to the rest of it?
The trouble is that the show doesn't know the answer, though it freely admits this. None of the gold has ever been recovered, but a note at the beginning explains that the series is based on both real events and theories as to where the loot went. As before, some of the characters are real and some invented. The focus, this time, is on bringing down the ones who got away. The police are hot on the heels of the charming rogue John Palmer (Tom Cullen), AKA 'Goldfinger', who talked his way out of a conviction so convincingly in series one. They're also trying to track down Charlie Miller (Sam Spruell), a fictional amalgam of various south London villains, who has come away from the robbery with a lot of gold to hide and only loose ideas of what to do with it.
The first series, set in the 1980s, was a classic cops-and-robbers drama, and as a result, was more contained and more thrilling. The second series moves the action to the 1990s, and has to work harder, at least initially. It follows the money through a sprawling network of villains, some small-time, some so big-time that at one point we take a detour to the country then called Burma. (I'm sure the cast who were stuck on the Isle of Man felt no resentment whatsoever towards the actors who ended up mostly in Tenerife.)
For the first couple of episodes, The Gold seems uneasy with this new sense of unharnessed scale. It starts out like an instalment of The Famous Five, or Scooby-Doo, as Miller heads for the disused tin mines of Cornwall. But it soon drags its attention back to the money trail and the investigation, still led by Det Supt Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville at his best). The police work has been going on for so long that he and his team are losing the support of their superiors, who are trying to shut them down. These scenes feel a little stuck, a little repetitive, lacking the excitement of the robbery and its immediate aftermath. That is, until Palmer begins to flaunt his wealth and muscle his way into the English establishment.
The Gold has always had something to chew on about who belongs where, and who gets to do what. The establishment and the underworld are rarely as distinct as you might think, the series seems to say, an idea that on occasion muddies the waters of who you are supposed to be rooting for. Miller is perceived as a 'knuckle-dragger' by Douglas Baxter, a disgraced Cambridge graduate and tax whiz whom Miller tasks with cleaning the dirty money. Joshua McGuire – a standout – plays Baxter with a snivelling haughtiness as repellent as it is pathetic. In fact, this is filled with thunderingly good performances, both billed and in the form of a few surprise appearances, which should please fans of series one.
Any sense of triumph, of thieves luxuriating in their ill-gotten gains, is soon swallowed up by paranoia, and by episode three, the claustrophobia experienced by those involved in Brink's-Mat is palpable. Palmer's timeshare business in Tenerife is hiding a multitude of sins, and when the Russians arrive, it's fair to say that his work-life balance tips in an unfavourable direction. Miller, meanwhile, directs his attention towards the Virgin Islands, and a network of old boys to which he does not belong. For Palmer and Miller, the bubble can only get so big before it bursts, and the series revels in slowly turning the screws on them.
The Gold is still prone to giving its characters lengthy speeches, in order to explain their belief system or philosophy of life, but that quirk has become as much a part of the series as sweaty detectives shouting 'nick 'im!', or indistinct timeframes indicated by captions like 'a few years ago'. But there is an overwhelming sense that this is Good Quality British Drama, despite the inevitable sprawl that comes with a story wandering across the Canaries, the Caribbean, Asia, the Isle of Man and London. For the most part, it is focused and newly thrilling. And despite having no obvious ending to draw from in real life, The Gold manages to cobble one together, with gusto.
The Gold aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.