Legends

Legends launched on Netflix on 7 May 2026 as Neil Forsyth's follow-up to The Gold (2023), his BBC dramatisation of the Brink's-Mat bullion robbery, and his earlier BBC Scotland crime drama Guilt. Across six episodes, the series takes another fact-based 1990s British crime story (a small team of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise officers seconded out of their day jobs and sent undercover into the country's drug-importation networks) and treats it with the same restrained, archival realism that defined his earlier work. Brady Hood and Julian Holmes direct.

Tom Burke leads the ensemble as Guy, the team's reluctant operational lead, opposite Steve Coogan as the senior civil servant Don who recruits them, and Hayley Squires, Tom Hughes and Aml Ameen as the rest of the unit. The casting against type (Coogan in a serious role, Burke in straight-leading-man register) was widely commented on, as was the production's commitment to period-accurate locations across London, Liverpool and the Scottish border country where the original operations took place.

Reception on release was strongly positive, with British critics treating the series as confirmation of Forsyth's place as the most consistent dramatist of recent British true-crime, alongside Jed Mercurio and Peter Morgan. The show carries a 96% Tomatometer score across the early review window and was widely placed in spring 2026 best-of lists. As with The Gold, much of the critical conversation focused on Forsyth's instinct for the unglamorous procedural texture of British state work — meetings in airless rooms, expense forms, lives quietly given over to the job.