{"id":223544,"date":"2025-06-29T08:37:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T08:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/223544\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T08:37:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T08:37:14","slug":"i-knew-the-golds-geezers-this-show-nailed-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/223544\/","title":{"rendered":"I knew The Gold\u2019s geezers \u2014 this show nailed them"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was born a few streets away from where Kenny Noye grew up in Bexleyheath, Kent, and much later lived quite close to his palatial pad in West Kingsdown, the grounds of which were, for a while, patrolled by a lion. It was a favoured area for the Sarf Lunnun crims to settle because, I was told, it was the first area outside the Met\u2019s jurisdiction, as well as being pleasantly leafy. <\/p>\n

We had a rented gaff that contained a hideous concrete fishpond. I inquired whether we could demolish the thing and got the reply: \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be digging under there, my boy.\u201d I asked a local cabbie thought to have gangland connections what Kenny was like. He replied: \u201cKenny? \u2019E\u2019s a diamond geezer. Absolute diamond, mate. Butchoo wouldn\u2019t want to cross him \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, no indeed. All of the above however did add a certain piquancy to my enjoyment of The Gold <\/b>(BBC1, Mon), the final episode of which was shown last week. This rather magnificent dramatisation of the painstaking but flawed attempts on the part of the Met to bring to justice the Brink\u2019s-Mat robbers \u2014 for whom Kenny allegedly acted as a fence \u2014 ended with Noye being caught on the run in Spain. Most of the gold has never been recovered. <\/p>\n

Jack Lowden had just the right amount of psychopathic menace for Noye, and Sam Spruell was terrific as a character inspired by the Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson (murdered in 1990, case unsolved). The script was occasionally overwritten: I am not convinced that Kenny, Charlie and co were quite as given to philosophical aphorisms as the programme suggested (\u201cWe are a union of ruined souls.\u201d Really?), but this is a small mistake. As was the accent Tom Cullen used to portray the former market trader and fraudster John Palmer, which sounded Cornish when it should have been West Midlands. <\/p>\n

Palmer was murdered in 2015, case unsolved. Noye, though, was released from chokey in 2019. When he was first sent down, the reporters gathered outside that pad in West Kingsdown, pestering his wife, Brenda, for an interview. She told them all to get lost, apart from a mate of mine who knew the best line of approach. \u201cHallo, Brenda, I hear you\u2019ve had the place done up lavverly!\u201d She let him in and gave him a tour, stopping at the master bathroom. \u201cAll the taps and fixtures are made from pure gold,\u201d she gushed and then, looking at my friend with narrowed eyes, added, \u201cBut it ain\u2019t from where you fink!\u201d I wonder where it all went, though? And how many coppers got a slice?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mrs Rajan seems a charming woman \u2014 kindly, wise and mild of nature. How on earth did she come to give birth to a monster? In Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges<\/b> (BBC1, Wed) the man who now presents everything for the BBC visited India to pay a kind of homage to his recently deceased father. This involved Rajan immersing himself in the Ganges to cleanse his spirit. I think it would take more than the bloody Ganges to do that. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Amol Rajan: what I learnt holidaying with four kids under eight<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m also slightly surprised that the BBC didn\u2019t arrange for the Ganges to visit Rajan, given his scheduled commitments as well as his fairly high opinion of himself. When he\u2019s not presenting University Challenge, he\u2019s on Today, and here he was again, bumptious and blinged up with his neck chain and gold stud earring, trying to appear humble at an enormous convocation of Hindus desperate to cleanse themselves at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers \u2014 a total of 500 million people crushed into a tiny area to commemorate a planetary alignment that occurs every 144 years. <\/p>\n

\"Amol<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m surprised the BBC didn\u2019t get the Ganges to visit Amol\u201d<\/p>\n

WILDSTAR FILMS\/BBC<\/p>\n

It was a living hell: I could not imagine being anywhere worse than in this baying, endless throng of people. It also seemed a disaster waiting to happen \u2014 and lo, it did. On January 29 about 30 people were killed and another 90 injured in a mad stampede by the river\u2019s edge, and Rajan wisely decided to proceed no further that evening. He got a swift dunking the next day when most people had gone home. How did it affect him? \u201cI feel small and humble and pious,\u201d he said. Just like Nick Robinson, then. He\u2019s OK, Amol, but I suspect it would take a lot more than a quick dip in a river to mediate his sense of self. His ma was lovely, though.<\/p>\n

Another continent, another disaster. On October 29 last year the rains hit Spain, creating floods that left almost 230 people dead and causing damage estimated at \u00a315 billion. In Why Cities Flood: Spain\u2019s Deadly Disaster<\/b> (BBC1, Tues) we were shown the damage done to Valencia and its surrounding towns and villages. The footage of the waters rising and rising, of cars being tossed around like flotsam, was utterly terrifying, as were the testimonies from the people who had to clamber for their lives. <\/p>\n

But the answer is that cities flood if they are built on a flood plain with high mountains close behind and with global warming, this kind of extreme weather event is going to happen increasingly often.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

I suppose there must be some people who have been enjoying The Gilded Age <\/b>(Sky Atlantic\/Now) but I can\u2019t imagine why. The third series<\/a> of this behemoth, set in 1880s New York, is upon us in all its faux grandeur. OK, the costumes are probably authentically of their time, but this farrago of rotten acting and even worse dialogue reminded me more of the 1950s. It was like one of those postwar musicals, full of scenes choreographed to within an inch of their lives and sets that look so much like, well, sets, it is hard to concentrate on the idiotic action taking place. <\/p>\n

Can\u2019t blame the Americans, either \u2014 this was all dreamt up by our own very dear Julian Fellowes, of Downton Abbey fame, but it seems to me flatulent nonsense, a shoddy soap opera elevated to the level of opera. Fellowes is already getting some stick in the US for failing to understand the American dream, for taking too British an approach to what was a singularly American experience. All that money was to be revelled in, not sneered at, I think was the gist. Either way, I couldn\u2019t bear it and I like to think that Noye would have felt likewise. Diamond geezer, but you wouldn\u2019t want to cross him.<\/p>\n

What have you been enjoying on television recently? Let us know in the comments below<\/p>\n

Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a> , the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a> , the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to what to watch this week<\/a> and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was born a few streets away from where Kenny Noye grew up in Bexleyheath, Kent, and much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[77,382,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-223544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114765748252633116","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}