'The Gold' Premieres with a 24k Episode in “To Be a King”

The Brink's-Mat gold heist was one of the defining crimes of the late 20th century in the U.K. Twenty-six million pounds in gold bullion was stolen from a Heathrow airport warehouse. Although many were charged and some served jail time, four of the six thieves who carried out the job have still not been identified 40 years later, and none of the stolen wealth has ever been recovered. Policing in the U.K. was radically altered in the wake of the crime, as was the world of London's underground crime scene, not to mention the actual skyline of the city itself.

Considering that any drama series based on this event is hamstrung by the lack of knowledge about four of the criminals and the non-recovery of the stolen goods, it's somewhat miraculous that The Gold works at all. However, as the series opens, it becomes clear that this "true crime" series isn't really focused on the original crime. The opening minutes of the premiere re-stage the events that led to the theft, running through the sequence of events from the time the thieves arrived at a storage facility at Heathrow. 

However, it also emphasizes the awkward elephant in the room: the entire heist was an unplanned accident, and the original six thieves who made off with the three tons of gold bullion were a real-life version of the dog that caught the car.

The gang of thieves that broke in were small-time hoods, led by career criminals Micky McAvoy (Adam Nagaitis) and Brian Robinson (Frankie Wilson). When we refer to "career criminals," it should be understood that we are not talking about individuals like America's famous Al Capone or the fictionalized Don Corleone from The Godfather. The Western economy stagnated badly in the early 1970s, and for the U.K., the deficit grew at an appalling rate, resulting in a bailout in 1976 from the IMF. Unemployment rose at an alarming rate over the next decade, and the permanent underclass that defined Victorian and Edwardian England quickly re-emerged.

It had only been a generation or two since the post-war attempt to elevate London's "criminal class" through its great society ventures, and these descendants of the people Charles Dickens once fictionalized quickly returned to working as career thieves and small-time drug dealers. McAvoy and Robinson's quarry on the night in question was pretty typical of the sorts of jobs being pulled on the regular. They'd been alerted by a mole in Heathrow's security force of one million Spanish peseta banknotes, which would be held in a warehouse vault before being flown to their next location, giving the gang a 24-hour window to nab it. 

It cannot be overstated how small this haul was or how simplistic the money laundering system they used was — taking the foreign bills to an exchange in Calais, returning with them as francs, and then exchanging for pounds. The currency rate meant that the six of them were expecting to walk away with a total of £4,500 ($9,000 U.S.), or £750 ($1500) each. This was not the kind of heist where the thieves would retire; it was just enough to live on for a few months, maybe a year, while planning the next one. In Thatcher's England, this commonplace, and all those who regularly committed them, were well known to Scotland Yard.

While waiting for the vault to open, McAvoy spied the stacks and stacks of gold bullion, which were too numerous to fit in the vault. It was barely a moment's hesitation before he pivoted. To hell with the small time; this was "do it and be legends" territory. In the midst of the raid, no one stopped to question whether they should just because they could. They took everything.

It wasn't until the adrenaline had worn off and McAvoy and Robinson realized they had a huge problem: the gold bullion was marked, and every policeman in London was looking for it. Step One, therefore, was to melt the gold down and reforge it. (Exactly what Step Two was doesn't seem to have occurred to them yet, but, hey, Step One first.) For that, they needed a goldsmith, and the only ones they knew were Kenneth Noye (Jack Lowden) and John Palmer (Tom Cullen), who'd used the U.K.'s attempt at creating social mobility for the working class by skimming enough off the tops of their business to afford the crumbling palatial homes being sold by downsizing former aristocracy to avoid poverty. 

Noye and Palmer have made it — giant estates, horses, cars, and well-dressed wives — partly because they've always stayed just close enough to the side of the law that they have plausible deniability and never left enough of a trail to get caught. It's also made clear that they both recognized that as long as what they skimmed was minor enough to those with "real wealth," no one would come after them. Laundering £26 million in a few weeks is precisely the kind of job they absolutely don't do, because that is horning in on the real money of the world. 

But, much like McAvoy and Robinson, Noye takes one look at the stacks and stacks of gold bullion and loses his mind a little. Once again, the urge to just do it and be legends is too much temptation.

Since this is a Heathrow thievery case, the first ones on the scene are two members of London's "Flying Squadron": DC Tony Brightwell (Emun Elliott) and DS Nicki Jennings (Charlotte Spencer). However, considering the amount of money involved, it doesn't stay there for long, as Scotland Yard's head, Gordon Stewart (Peter Davison), decides a special ops team needs to be assigned to the case, led by DCI Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville). Jennings isn't willing to just let the case go elsewhere, not when she already has a hand in it, and it's not long before the two find themselves being transferred to the London Met offices to join Boyce.

Bonneville plays the real-life copper with a world-weariness and frustration that is palpable. He didn't ask for this job — it's a booby prize. He's bitter at how stupid the gang was to take this stuff in the first place, and that none of them seem to have realized that what they've done will basically destroy their way of life, such as it is. It's not until Jennings points out the opening this gives them to take down the thieves up the chain, the people like Noye, and those above him, that he sees a chance to do something about the entire system.

Let's talk about those above Noye, represented for the show's purposes by solicitor Edwyn Cooper (Dominic Cooper), who Noye's contact, Gordon Parry (Sean Harris), sets him up with. Remember that Step Two, which McAvoy and Robinson hadn't quite grasped? The goldsmiths can melt the stuff down and reforge it, but that's still not money, not in the global markets of 1984. Nor can two men with their accents and backgrounds take that gold to a Swiss bank for proper laundering, not without the police being alerted. They need a bona fide upper-class member who can walk into that world and plunk down a million in gold bars, no questions asked.

Edwyn is also not upper-class by birth, but, like the gold he'll soon be funneling, he's laundered himself to the point where most can't tell the difference. He picked up a starter wife whose middle-class background helped him score a position at a high-class law firm and made his way up by defending corrupt cops, who then owed him favors. His second wife was a younger model, the kind who both had connections and the right look to help him reach partner. Once he started meeting women with actual pedigrees, he threw her over; his third (and current) wife has titled parents, generational wealth, and has given birth to a son, the official family heir. You'd never know from the outside that he wasn't born into this life.

Parry is still a working-class gent, but he knows that Cooper is beholden to him and takes a bit of perverse delight in forcing Cooper to invite himself and Noye to his club. The workman's coat he sports at the meeting where Cooper tells him to wear a jacket probably really is the best he can do, but the fact that he wears it as lightly as Cooper does his (while Noye is drowning in his super pricey bespoke number) speaks volumes about the power in this situation.

It's also very notable that of everyone involved, Parry is the only one with enough cunning to think "at scale," as it were, for the amount of money these men are dealing with. McAvoy and Robinson saw gold baubles; Noye believes it's about having enough money never to have to work again, and Cooper pictures Swiss bank accounts. But Parry recognizes that £26 million can create the kind of generational wealth that lasts: Real Estate. The crumbling relic that was once the Port of London is now a condemned and derelict area of the city that no one visits. £26 million could change that, permanently. 

The first episode of The Gold ends with McAvoy and Robinson's hopes of being in on this deal shattered. Facing serious jail time, McAvoy figures he can give his share back and take a lighter sentence, but Noye's already cut him out of the process. By the time Boyce, Brightwell, and Jennings pull up to the small storage unit that was housing the stacks of gold bars, it's long empty. The working-class thieves never knew how to handle the gold in the first place, or they would not have come to him, so he has moved it to a place with people who can.

Meanwhile, Cooper stands on what is left of the once mighty docks, through which London's fortunes once flowed, and very soon will again, as long as he can stay one step ahead.

This post was originally published as a review on 09.18.2023. Updated 10.5.2025.

The Gold Season 1 continues with new episodes on Sundays through the beginning of November on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Channel. All episodes will arrive as a binge on PBS Passport for members on premiere day. Season 2 has already aired in the U.K. and is expected to debut on PBS in 2026.