It’s astonishing that Netflix with the gazillions at their disposal can be guaranteed to generate surprise at their ability to turn out two more-than-halfway-decent series in a week. As you might expect, given this genre is their trump card, it’s another true crime venture. And in the exceptionally capable hands of Scottish writer Neil Forsyth (The Gold, 20234) it’s a cracker.
Not so unusually it’s set in the underworld arena of the British drugs trade. But, very unusually, despite the gazillions of minutes devoted to this part of the sordid genre, it takes us somewhere new. Back in time, to the 1990s. Miles away from the usual world-weary cops and instead into Customs and Excise. Miles away, too, from South East Asian, Eastern European or South American gangs, heading for the unfamiliar domain of the Turkish-dominated section of London.
Recruitment consultants would dearly love to be able to emulate the approach of maverick customs boss Don (Steve Coogan) in selecting an undercover team to infiltrate a heroin operation. Anyone who so much as asks any questions at all is deemed surplus to requirements.
By undercover standards, the team is minute. Don in charge, gruff Guy (Tom Burke) is sent into London, Kate (Hayley Squires) and Bailey (Aml Ameen) to Liverpool with Erin (Jasmine Blackborrow) manning the desk, chasing up intel (in a pre-internet world) and keeping the woke quotient down.
Don’s boss Blake (Douglas Hodge) pops up every now and then to placate the Home Secretary (Alex Jennings) who is jumpy at allocating so much dough to a mission he’s kept in the dark about. Half the time of course the undercover agents are living on their wits, hoping they can remember every aspect of their fake lives – one mistake and on something as inconsequential as football minutiae and someone will torch your wife and child.
We don’t quite know what scars Don bears from his previous undercover outings, but while their weight condemns him to a solitary life, they come in useful when detecting whether his new charges are going to implode. Excitement and the whiff of danger seem to over-ride the prospect of personal cost.
Not surprisingly, victims come into focus. But exactly which victim does take you by surprise, especially in the face of their reaction. We watch a squaddie become hooked on heroin and when he dies the anguish on his father’s face, even half-hidden behind his spectacles, is very moving. The kicker is the dad is a heroin-dealer.
There’s various Succession tropes, as an Irish duo try to muscle in on the territory of Liverpool gangland boss Carter (Tom Hughes) and underling Zeki (Joshua Samuels) making an unwise move against the Turkish drugs leader.
In among this is a bunch of the playing of hunches and dogged detective work, the hidden clue, the unexpected missing link – you’ve acquired the code to get into a drugs stronghold, not realizing you required a different one to get out. Anytime Don is hampered by bureaucracy he takes the nuclear option and some idiot gets his ear chewed out by Blake.
What makes it work most of all is that the bulk of these characters are new to us. Their motivations remain obscure, the backgrounds rarely in focus, but when they are they can shift in the opposite direction.
The acting is first class. I never rated Steve Coogan (Saipan, 2025) before but I do now. Plummy voice is erased, tendency to overact gone and in its place a tortured human being with a mind that races along like a zipwire. Tom Burke (Black Bag, 2025) combines Steve McQueen charm with Lee Marvin menace. Douglas Hodge (We Live in Time, 2024) has taken on the Trevor Howard mantle of the character most likely to explode in fury.
But most of the plaudits should go to showrunner Neil Forsyth.
Keep it up, Netflix.
The Magnificent 60s 