'The Gold' Kicks Off Paramount+'s Slate of International Series
When Paramount+ initially announced ambitious plans to put 50 international titles into production by the end of 2022, it surprised streaming service experts, for whom the service was badly late and awkwardly managed. The lateness wasn't the service's fault, as parent companies CBS and Viacom struggled to recombine after splitting over a decade ago, leaving it as "CBS All Access" long after its competitors had blown by. Moreover, it had classic left-hand/right-hand problems as Paramount still signed away rights to Paramount-produced hits to competitors barely days before the service launched.
But a streaming service cannot survive on Star Trek and Yellowstone alone (especially when Paramount already sold the Yellowstone streaming rights to competitor Peacock), and after a few delays, that international slate is set to bow on Paramount+ this fall, starting with The Gold. Based on the real-life 1983 Brinks-Mat heist, the series was a massive hit on the BBC in the U.K. in January 2023. (Yes, the BBC, not the Paramount-owned Channel 5; the left-hand/right-hand problems do not stop at the border.) The series was initially circulated as debuting at the end of June but pulled from the lineup last minute, held to function as the kick-off for a more extensive slate.
The Gold is billed as "a pulsating dramatization of this extraordinary and epic story for the first time in its entirety." For those who aren't old enough to remember, the heist occurred when six men broke into a depot near Heathrow Airport, assuming they would find about £1m in Spanish pesetas. This was not as unusual as one might think; in the pre-internet era, stealing foreign currency in hopes of laundering via an exchange was practical. However, in this particular case, the six walked in to find something that was anything but ordinary: £26m in gold bullion, platinum, diamonds, and traveler's checks. Faced with the opportunity to attempt the largest gold heist in the history of the planet, they decided to do it and be legends.
