'The Gold' spins the tale of a 1983 British heist into a patient portrait of cops, robbers, class and greed

On Nov. 26, 1983, six men robbed a warehouse serving London’s Heathrow Airport. Hoping to find £1 cardinal worthy of overseas currency, they recovered alternatively 6,800 golden bars, worthy £26 cardinal successful 1983 wealth — a record-setting robbery astatine the clip — nether the impermanent supervision of Brink’s-Mat. (A national of the American information steadfast and a British transport outfit.) This lawsuit has been transmuted into “The Gold,” an involving British play premiering present Sunday connected PBS.

The robbery itself takes up small surface time; the question connected the transgression broadside becomes however to crook 3 tons of golden into cash, and for the police, 1 of recovering the loot and bringing the villains to justice. The cops and the criminals overlap present and there, a constituent screenwriter Neil Forsyth does not privation you to miss, and is simply a peculiar bee successful the bonnet of upright Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville), self-contained but ever acceptable to talk his mind. (He is besides “infuriated” by what radical get incorrect astir jazz, which helium likens to constabulary work.)

Recruited by Boyce to a peculiar task unit are detectives Tony Brightwell (Emun Elliott), historical, and Nicki Jennings (a charismatic Charlotte Spencer), invented, who are bully institution for the spectator and mostly for each other, though arsenic radical who walk agelong hours sitting unneurotic successful cars waiting for thing to happen, they person their moments of friction, played for humor. As a created character, Jennings — who, arsenic a woman, has to outline the galore steps and hard enactment it took to execute her presumption — offers an accidental for affectional elaboration, notably successful scenes (affectionate, prickly) with her father, Billy (Danny Webb), “by a state mile the worst villain successful England,” his transgression vocation sidelined by sick health.

Though 1 of the existent robbers, Micky McAvoy (Adam Nagaitis), gets a bully woody of attention, the bulk of the bid involves 3 criminals subsequently processing the golden and laundering the money. Kenneth Noye (Jack Lowden) is “a obstruction with protection,” owing to his relationship with constabulary officers done rank successful the Masons. (When Boyce brings Jennings and Brightwell onto his team, helium sets the rules arsenic “no overtime, nary drinking astatine lunchtime, nary freemasonry.”) John Palmer (Tom Cullen), a dyslexic trader successful golden and jewelry, has a useful portable smelter successful his yard. And the invented Edwyn Cooper (Dominic Cooper), an up-from-the-streets solicitor with posh airs and a affluent woman whose snooty parents dainty him with hardly disguised disdain, finds himself moving for “a radical of businessmen who person a batch of wealth that needs to beryllium made respectable,” successful the words of liaison Gordon Parry (Sean Harris, sinister).

Stretched implicit six episodes, it’s not a speedy telling, and, successful fact, a 2nd bid covering a agelong process of aftermath has already aired successful the U.K. Apart from immoderate surveillance, tailing suspects, 1 fatal brushwood and an occasional chase, there’s small successful the mode of capital-A Action, mostly conscionable a batch of speech — inquisitive, instructive, threatening, discursive, home oregon speechifying. Though the accumulation is naturalistic — successful a mode that ties it to an earlier, aureate epoch of British productions — the dialog tin dependable highly composed. Characters are fixed small monologues, often to explicate however they became the idiosyncratic they are, that play arsenic the benignant of happening that mightiness hap precocious successful the past enactment of a signifier drama: Jennings recovered the sirens extracurricular her model comforting, which led her to constabulary work, “so that kids similar maine volition beryllium safe”; Boyce had a life-changing infinitesimal involving a brace of reddish leather shoes portion warring successful the alleged Cypriot Emergency. Some dialog mightiness person been lifted full from a 1930s gangster film. Critiques of British people operation and atrocious actors wrong the constabulary section are raised precocious capable to beryllium intolerable to miss.

There are a batch of moving parts successful “The Gold,” represented successful sometimes little alternating scenes, and it whitethorn instrumentality a while, among the crooks, astatine least, to get a grip connected things, to benignant retired wherever you are, who’s who, who’s joined to whom, and what portion each plays successful the caper. Though Noye is arrogant capable to basal against, Forsyth wants to show, arsenic overmuch arsenic each quality allows, the just-folks elements of his atrocious guys, psychologically relatable sorts who have, from aboriginal experience, a deficiency of opportunity, oregon a definite benignant of genius, decided that the way to state is champion paved with different people’s money. (“If it wasn’t for radical trying trying to interruption retired of the lives they’ve been given,” observes Boyce of his country’s societal stratification, the constabulary would beryllium retired of a job.) This whitethorn beryllium soft-pedaling matters somewhat — to work the humanities accounts mightiness springiness you a antithetic representation — but arsenic play it pays dividends.

As a play piece, it doesn’t oversell the era. There are aged cars, of course, and much mustaches than we are presently accustomed to. But isolated from the popular songs that tally implicit the extremity credits, thing screams These Are the ’80s. (Compare, for example, the “Life connected Mars” sequel, “Ashes to Ashes.”) It’s much a question of what isn’t there. The detectives person a computer, but lone Brightwell has an thought of what it’s for oregon however to usage it. No cellphones, but determination are walkie-talkies. A tracking device, seemingly the lone 1 successful each of British instrumentality enforcement, has to beryllium imported from Belfast (and sneakily astatine that). There is simply a refreshing lack of guns — nary of those Kevlar-clad teams going successful with pistols raised. (Just truncheons.) And the remodeling of East London into a gentrified solid forest, a insignificant crippled point, has lone conscionable begun.

It’s similar a abrogation from now, and who can’t usage 1 of those?