Legends: What’s The True Story Behind Netflix’s New Drama?

7 days ago

If you enjoyed The Gold, you will love this

This post may contain affiliate links. Learn more

Period dramas have an unending allure – especially when they draw on a true story. And for lovers of crime dramas, doubly so: delving behind the scenes of the crimes you remember making the headlines, scrutinising not just the perpetrators but the heroes grappling to track them down, with extra salacious drama added in for good measure.

That’s why we’re eager to tune into Legends, a new British crime thriller set to land on Netflix this week, which was created and written by Neil Forsyth, the man behind BBC drama The Gold. But this time the historic case at hand has national implications.

Here’s everything you need to know before you tune in.

Steve Coogan as Don & Douglas Hodge as Blake in Legends.

The Plot

Whisking us back to London in the 90s, Legends centres on undercover agents as they attempt to root out Britain’s heroin crisis. The problem? These agents are civil servants (customs officers, to be precise), retrained and thrust onto the front line. Expect paper-pushing mundanity spliced with heart-pumping violence.

Directed by Brady Hood and Julian Holmes, it all begins when the government launches its top secret training program, enlisting customs employees with tantalising staff room posters asking ‘could you offer more?’ in an all-caps, wartime style. One persuaded officer is Guy (Tom Burke), who swaps his humdrum life for high-stakes, front-line missions on Britain’s drug-torn streets.

All of this is elevated with 90s outfits (Timberlands, gold jewellery, baggy jeans, tracksuits) and glossy cars, with a killer soundtrack channelling the era too: think Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, EMF, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Manics, The Fall, Depeche Mode and more.

Watch the trailer below for a taste of the action.

Legends is all about that double-life, double-identity. As we learn at the top of the trailer (thanks to Coogan’s character Don, who leads the recruitment scheme), the title draws on the dual identity of undercover agents. ‘Your legend is the identity we use when we work undercover. Your legend has to be part of you. One wrong word, one wrong decision, and you’re a goner,’ Don explains.

Is It A True Story?

We also learn in the trailer that Legends is inspired by true events – but it is a history that has remained deliberately obscure. As Guy asks in the trailer, ‘So we do this with all the danger that comes with it, and if we die doing it, then no one ever knows that we did it at all?’

In the 90s, as Britain was sliding into recession, HM Customs and Excise really was losing its battle with heroin coming over the borders. Margaret Thatcher reportedly took a personal interest in stamping it out, with pressure running from Number 10 directly to the Home Office and to Customs, who tried something none of the orthodox agencies were doing: they advertised internally for ordinary Customs staff (airport bag-checkers, VAT inspectors, vice officers, secretaries) willing to invent a false identity (a ‘legend’) and infiltrate the gangs themselves.

These are the titular Legends we see in the drama: Heathrow customs officer Guy (Burke), ex-customs Kate (Hayley Squires), VAT inspector Bailey (Aml Ameen) and Civil Service secretary Erin (Jasmine Blackborow). While this four-Legend ensemble is condensed from a wider real-life pool of operatives and Coogan’s Don is a composite of two real heads of operation, Guy is based on a real man, Guy Stanton, with Legends drawing on Stanton’s autobiography The Betrayer: How An Undercover Unit Infiltrated The Global Drug Trade. The real government scheme was called Beta Projects, and Stanton worked undercover for 11 years rooting out the major players in global organised crime, all while donning gangster outfits, including hefty, bank-breaking watches.

Tom Burke as Guy, Jasmine Blackborow as Erin, Steve Coogan as Don, Aml Ameen as Bailey & Hayley Squires as Kate in Legends

Because Beta Projects operated on a shoestring budget, operatives utilised impounded vehicles and seized jewellery to bring their undercover personas to life. According to reports, around half a dozen legends operated in the field at any one time, but there is almost no public record of what they did. As such, Stanton’s book was a bible for Forsyth, as were interviews with the now-retired operative, and researcher Adam Fenn spent months on court transcripts and newspaper archives to reconstruct the course of events.

‘I conducted lots of interviews, some with people who were happy to talk to me publicly, others who needed to be a bit more clandestine,’ Forsyth says. ‘The more I listened, the more extraordinary the tale revealed itself to be. As a writer, the true excitement lies in the story’s complexity; the number of surprising worlds and people it involves. When you’re writing something across six episodes, you look for complexity and surprise, and this story delivered both.’

That said, there was almost too much real material to work from. ‘I did need to condense and simplify it,’ Forsyth confirms, ‘because otherwise it would be extremely complicated and we’d have far too many characters. It’s about working out how to take the true story and make it manageable in terms of six episodes of television, because real life is very messy. So we did the research, gathered up everything that happened and all the people who were involved, and decided which characters to concentrate on. In some cases these are composites of real life people, to give a real breadth of experience, while being completely true to the spirit of what happened and the major incidents that occurred.’

Aml Ameen as Bailey & Hayley Squires as Kate in Legends

The Cast

After his turn as a National Cyber Security case officer in 2025’s stylish thriller Black Bag, Strike star Tom Burke is back behind government lines in Legends, which he leads as Guy. He is joined by Steve Coogan as Don. The comedian, best known for his character Alan Partridge, is currently filming The White Lotus season 4 in the south of France.

They’re joined by The Night Manager series 2 star Hayley Squires as Kate, while You star Charlotte Ritchie joins as Guy’s wife Sophie.

The full cast we know so far includes:

Tom Burke as Guy
Steve Coogan as Don
Hayley Squires as Kate
Aml Ameen as Bailey
Jasmine Blackborow as Erin
Charlotte Ritchie as Sophie
Douglas Hodge as Blake
Tom Hughes as Carter
Johnny Harris as Eddie
Gerald Kyd as Mylonas
Numan Acar as Hakan
Joshua Samuels as Zeki
Kem Hassan as Aziz
Thomas Coombes as Shaun

Where Was It Filmed?

Legends was filmed in 2025, on location in London (including Muswell Hill’s Fortis Green Road), Liverpool, Bedford, Portsmouth, St Albans, East Sussex, Reading, Farnborough and Camberley, with additional scenes shot in sunny Morocco.

Will There Be Another Season?

No news just yet from Netflix on the future of Legends, but we will update this page as and when we know if season 2 is on the cards.

Release Date

All six episodes of Legends will land on Netflix on Thursday 7 May 2026. Each episode is one hour long.

WATCH