The Gold (2023)

Watchseries; The actual story of Brinks Matt is fascinating. The BBC doesn't do this justice. It's just another drama with the standard flaws. The acting is great, with the usual quality the BBC can muster. Sadly, the pacing is too slow and the diversity of the cast is bizarre. How many Chinese bank managers or lawyers were there in the 1980's. The women are all awesome, much better than the men. Strong, competent but oppressed - and they slip that in a lot. The costumes are clique and all look brand new. The cars are all clean. Hair and styling were normal BBC drama standard. Nothing about their recreation of the biggest robbery in British history was new or impressive beyond the story itself. What a shame.

The actual story of Brinks Matt is fascinating. The BBC doesn't do this justice. It's just another drama with the standard flaws. The acting is great, with the usual quality the BBC can muster. Sadly, the pacing is too slow and the diversity of the cast is bizarre. How many Chinese bank managers or lawyers were there in the 1980's. The women are all awesome, much better than the men. Strong, competent but oppressed - and they slip that in a lot. The costumes are clique and all look brand new. The cars are all clean. Hair and styling were normal BBC drama standard. Nothing about their recreation of the biggest robbery in British history was new or impressive beyond the story itself. What a shame.

The Gold watchseries. This is a great show, if you like police dramas, real life stories and a cracking cast!

The story was really interesting, can't believe the difference between the thieves and the level of people involved. Tells individual stories and doesn't push you to being on any side.

Most importantly the cast are superb, I'd like to see this ensemble doing something else together, felt almost like an old British version of Oceans Eleven!

Can't recommend this highly enough, don't believe the negative reviews, they must be from people working for another tv channel.

Hopefully more like this to come, also finally a BBC drama that doesn't have muffled volume.

Neil Forsyth is an excellent writer and The Gold has assembled an excellent cast. It's a very well-written, well-performed, heavily-dramatised version of real events and works well as escapism. Where it doesn't work is when it's trying to be a lesson on class struggle in the 1980's.

Firstly, the viewer didn't ask for, and doesn't need, a one-sided, finger-wagging morality lesson on societal iniquity. Secondly, Kenneth Noye and his associates were not class warriors fighting a rigged class system; they were a demonstration of amoral violent greed that makes even the worst of the class system look relatively humane.

But don't let that put you off watching The Gold; it's very entertaining and mostly manages to remember that it's supposed to be entertainment. In a world of multiple streaming options which credit the viewer with a modicum of intelligence, it would be great to see the BBC survive and thrive. If it's able to understand that the entertainment viewer primarily wants to be entertained and isn't actually looking for a simplistic, sophomoric morality tale, it might be in with a chance.

First episode is promising. Then it becomes clearer with each further episode that there's not enough story to sustain a series. Instead we get monologues. Endless monologues. Minor characters given "I remember when" monologues. Hardly any crime. No story. Everything is eked out to an excruciating degree. Casting is very 2023, which looks odd in the period the series is set in.

It all looks great. Wonderful cast. But the script is lacking. It feels rushed and doesn't clarify key details, leaving you feeling like you've missed a scene or an episode. Probably a great 3 part series here. But a poor, repetitive 6 hours.

I don't know how, when taking artistic liberty, they have made it less interesting than the actual events.

It's unauthentic. The language, the clothing, the character representation are all off.

This was a fascinating and revolutionary period in England which they've failed to reflect...

Thatcherism was at its peak following The Falklands War; so was resistance due to the country being in economic turmoil.

The working class was on its knees as the Tories took on the Unions.

National privatisation was underway.

The Cold War with its nuclear kiss, still gripped (If you heard an Eastern European accent you'd call the police).

"The English disease" ruled the terraces.

The MET ruled with instant retribution & zero accountability; if you think it's curupt now... yikes!

They didn't have to mess with the story as the reality, the time, was far more exciting, cruel & funny then this sanitised portrayal.

A sanitised portrayal for a pseudo audience.

As a television drama series, The Gold was very well done, well-acted, and a reasonable story line, but this is a fictional story, very loosely based on fact.

These are not nice, warm-hearted criminals, who would never hurt anyone outside their community, they are hardened, vicious and violent career criminals, who will stop at nothing in their way, it is very important to remember that.

The series makes compulsive viewing, but it is wrong to convey them as nice people, they are simply horrible people, who should not have publicity, it is a pity that the series did not portray them as such, and a pity it is not so factual.

However, despite all this, it is worth watching.