Masterpiece on PBS gets The Gold

Fans of a good heist or a British drama or both will soon be able to enjoy The Gold, which previously aired on the BBC and Paramount Plus, via Masterpiece on PBS. The network will air both the first season and the upcoming second season of the show, which features Masterpiece alum Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey). Bonneville co-stars alongside Jack Lowden, Dominic Cooper, Tom Cullen, Charlotte Spencer, and Emun Elliott. 

Based on a true story and “Informed by extensive research and interviews,” The Gold is described as “a pulsating dramatization which takes a journey into a 1980s world awash with cheap money and loosened morals to tell this extraordinary and epic story,” per the series synopsis. “On November 26, 1983, six armed men broke into the Brink’s-Mat security depot near London’s Heathrow Airport, and inadvertently stumbled across gold bullion worth £26m. What started as a typical armed robbery, became a seminal event in British criminal history, remarkable not only for the scale of the theft, at the time the biggest in world history, but for its wider legacy. The disposal of the bullion led to a vast international money laundering operation, provided the dirty money that helped fuel the London Docklands property boom, united blue- and white-collar criminals and left controversy and murder in its wake.”

The first season (which The A.V. Club‘s Saloni Gajjar noted had “promising ideas but puny execution”) explores the heist and its immediate aftermath, while the second season “delves into the decades-long” fallout of the historic crime. According to the BBC, “As the police investigation continues, it becomes a tense, high-stakes journey into international money laundering and organised crime, while the police embark on dramatic manhunts as they desperately try to solve the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Metropolitan Police.” The Gold does not yet have a premiere date at Masterpiece, but will likely air in the new year.