Steve Coogan excels in Netflix Drama
In the parlance of undercover agents, a “legend” is the false identity someone makes up to infiltrate a criminal network. “Your legend has to come from you, or it won’t work. Your legend has to be a part of you, or it won’t work,” explains Don (Steve Coogan), a British customs officer charged with training a group of amateur spies to infiltrate heroin rings in the waning days of the Thatcher era. “And when legends don’t work, people die.”
“Legends” is also the name of the compact, compelling Netflix series that Don begins by assembling a group of secretaries, airport security officers and other under-stimulated misfits from the ranks of his agency for the mission at hand. Created and written by Neil Forsyth (“The Gold”), “Legends” is loosely based on a real-life series of customs operations in the late 1980s that involved the interception of several tons of narcotics on a limited budget and resources. But together with directors Brady Hood and Julian Holmes and an equally strong cast, led by a gravelly voice from Coogan and Tom Burke (“Furiosa”) as Don’s star pupil, Forsyth turns “Legends” into a gripping story of found potential and assumed identity.
In a show of its brisk, no-nonsense pace, “Legends” has Don whittling a bus full of applicants down to just four recruits in the first 15 minutes of the premiere. (And that timestamp includes an economic cold open that sits somewhere between two overdose deaths on opposite sides of the class spectrum, and proves why Thatcher chose to tackle the drugs crisis with such urgency.) Guy is a working-class Londoner whose wife supports his frustrated ambitions. He is joined by Sophie (Charlotte Ritchie), an administrative genius with a gift for reading documents; Kate (Hayley Squires), a northerner looking to combat the damage drugs have caused in her home region; and Bailey (Aml Ameen), a son of immigrants whose adopted country is blinded to his considerable abilities by racism. Given an opportunity to reward work and excitement, all four plan to make the most of it.
Don divides his team between the two main domestic distribution centers for heroin: Liverpool, where the decimation of industrial work at the docks has turned an entire generation towards narcotics and crime, and London, where a Kurdish gang based in Turkey’s Green Lanes district is importing products from Pakistan. (The cheerful opening scene of the second episode follows the supply chain of an opium crop, from harvest to processing, from Turkey to Britain). Kate and Bailey take Liverpool, where they recruit informants and plant resources to pursue local king Declan Carter (Tom Hughes). Guy is sent to Green Lanes alone, save for a charming Greek ex-con (Gerald Kyd) who gets Don out of prison in exchange for an introduction to the Kurds.
Guy’s legend, who he speaks of in the third person as a separate entity with ‘his’ own thoughts and feelings, is a former legitimate businessman with a chip on his shoulder after a divorce. However, according to Don’s instructions, Guy’s personality and mannerisms do not change when he is in character. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for this all my life,” he tells Don. All the spy clichés about losing yourself in the lie are bandied about, but Burke’s capable performance gives the feeling of a man awakened rather than transformed.
In the United States, the War on Drugs is largely remembered as a swamp, one that fueled the social devastation of mass incarceration rather than addressing the root cause of mass substance abuse. “Legends” is more optimistic about its characters’ achievements than, say, “The Wire,” and – as evidenced by Coogan’s casting – has a sense of humor to match. Scenes where the agents emerge from the field to shoot each other in a makeshift office have a chemistry that would seem like a lasting blueprint for future seasons if the story weren’t finite. But “Legends” still has a lot to say about the declining fortunes of the middle class in England, as presided over by Thatcher, plus the interference of career-motivated politicians with the dirty work of actual law enforcement. Alex Jennings of “The Crown” plays a perfectly chic Secretary of the Interior who pressures Don to move up his timeline for a major party conference.
But mostly, “Legends” has the same obvious enjoyment of risk-taking and adventure as its leads. Guy’s long con to get involved with the Green Lanes operation makes his arc the fullest expression of the show’s eponymous concept, but his colleagues take on assignments as property developers, German tourists and shady lawyers, taking on aliases and even going abroad when the job requires it. It’s all so much fun that you can forget the deadly stakes of the assignment – and that’s exactly the point.
All six episodes of ‘Legends’ are now available to stream on Netflix.
