THE GOLD - CATCHING UP WITH NEIL FORSYTH

The U.K. hit series, The Gold is premiering on this side of the pond on Paramount +

THE GOLD is inspired by the real-life events that took place on November 26, 1983, when six armed men broke into the Brink’s-Mat security depot near London’s Heathrow Airport and inadvertently stumbled across gold bullion worth £26m. According to detectives, what started as a typical Old Kent Road armed robbery became a seminal event in British criminal history that’s 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.  

Created and written by Neil Forsyth (Guilt), THE GOLD stars Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey, Paddington 1 and 2), alongside Dominic Cooper (The Preacher, The Devil’s Double), Jack Lowden (Small Axe: Mangrove, Slow Horses), Charlotte Spencer (The Duke, Cinderella), Tom Cullen (Becoming Elizabeth, Black Mirror), Emun Elliott (Guilt, Old), Sean Harris (Southcliffe, Mission: Impossible), Ellora Torchia (Ali and Ava, Midsommar), Stefanie Martini (Prime Suspect, The Last Kingdom), Daniel Ings (I Hate Suzie, Lovesick) and Adam Nagaitis (Red Rose, Chernobyl).

Co-produced by Tannadice Pictures, an Objective Fiction partner, and Paramount Television International Studios, THE GOLD provides a pulsating dramatization of this extraordinary and epic story for the first time. THE GOLD is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution outside of the Paramount+ markets.

THE GOLD first premiered in the UK on the BBC, where it received widespread acclaim and became one of the UK’s biggest new dramas of the year so far.

I spoke with Neil Forsyth about writing the book, creating the series and what fascinates him about this incredible heist.