‘Legends’ Review: Steve Coogan Powers a Retro, High-Stakes Netflix Thriller
An unlikely team of rookie operatives is thrown into 1980s Britain’s drug underworld in this sharp, fast-moving crime drama based on a true story.
Can you really turn an ordinary civil servant into a covert operative in a matter of days and drop them into the middle of a drug network without it becoming a death sentence? That’s the gamble at the heart of Legends, the new series from Nick Forsyth, the creator of the outstanding Gold. Drawing on the non-fiction book The Betrayer: How an Undercover Unit Infiltrated the Global Drug Trade by Guy Stanton and Peter Walsh, it revisits a little-known operation in late-1980s Britain. Led by Steve Coogan and Tom Burke, Legends makes a strong case for being Netflix’s standout police drama of the year so far.
It opens with a wry edge—the premise itself has a faintly absurd ring—but steadily tightens into a straight, no-nonsense thriller. Two parallel strands set things in motion: a pair of teenagers dying from heroin overdoses, and Margaret Thatcher’s government deciding to take a harder line on drug trafficking. The problem is money. Britain at the time simply didn’t have the resources for a full-blown “war on drugs”, so officials opt for a quieter, more improvised solution: recruit a handful of customs officers—people with no policing, investigative or military background—and send them undercover.
Don Clark (Coogan), alongside his superior Angus Blake (Douglas Hodge), oversees the selection process within Customs, where the riskiest work tends to rely more on instinct than on technology. Promising candidates a chance to “offer more”, they sift through applicants in a selection sequence that’s both awkward and very funny, eventually landing on four unlikely recruits. They are to become “legends”—undercover operatives required to build false identities and live them convincingly, no matter the cost.
The chosen four are led by Guy (Burke), a married man with a young daughter, clearly stifled by routine and looking for something more. Alongside him are Erin (Jasmine Blackborow), sharp and analytical when it comes to connecting the dots in reams of paperwork; Kate (Hayley Squires), adept with locks and technical devices; and Bailey (Aml Ameen), from an immigrant background and a natural negotiator. Think of them as a low-key, slightly makeshift team of superheroes: their mission is to embed themselves within drug rings operating out of London and Liverpool.
Guy takes on London, working his way into a Turkish-run outfit controlling much of the local trade—no easy feat, and not without serious complications. Up north, Kate and Bailey, joined by a volunteer recruit, tackle a separate network, initially from a safer distance and using more conventional methods, though the risks are no less real.
Across six brisk, tightly constructed episodes, Legends tracks both operations as they evolve—and unravel—under Don’s increasingly strained supervision. Early on, much of the tension is offset by the team’s inexperience and the occasional procedural mishap. But after a particularly brutal turn midway through (episode three marks a clear shift), the tone darkens considerably. Much of that weight is carried by Burke, a formidable presence who gives Guy a depth that sidesteps the usual “undercover cop losing himself” cliché. If anything, the opposite seems to be happening here.
The mechanics of the drug trade across various English cities may not be especially novel in themselves, but there’s something genuinely compelling about seeing how such operations were conducted before the advent of modern surveillance and digital tools. The period detail does a great deal of heavy lifting: the soundtrack curated by Forsyth—featuring the likes of The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Depeche Mode—along with the wardrobe, production design and regional accents, lends the series a texture and authenticity that slicker, more formulaic shows like Narcos rarely achieve.
Its brevity works in its favour, too. There’s no excess here, no narrative drift. What begins almost as a lark—a group of bored workers looking for something more exciting than their everyday lives—quickly turns into something far more perilous: a matter, quite plainly, of life and death.
