Imagine The A-Team but instead of a band of wrongfully convicted US army commandos who become soldiers of fortune, it\u2019s a group of dissatisfied baggage searchers and VAT investigators who have taken their ties off. Are you sold? Good! Because Legends is a six-part thriller by Neil Forsyth based on the true story of a group of ordinary men and women recruited from the rank and file of Her Majesty\u2019s Customs in the early 90s, given three weeks\u2019 training and sent undercover to infiltrate and bring down two massive drug cartels that were filling Britain\u2019s streets with heroin and really pissing Mrs Thatcher \u2013 head of the party of law and order, don\u2019t you know \u2013 off.<\/p>\n
Steve Coogan \u2013 possibly in need of a spot of emotional relief after a career spent playing losers or Jimmy Savile-shaped villains \u2013 stars as former undercover police officer Don Clarke. He puts the team together for the home secretary (Alex Jennings \u2013 this is statutory) and HMC\u2019s director of investigations Angus Blake (Douglas Hodge) despite neither of them seemingly offering any money or support for the project.<\/p>\n
The men in suits \u2026 Steve Coogan as Don and Douglas Hodge as Blake in Legends. Photograph: Justin Downing\/Netflix<\/p>\n
After a fun, if slightly silly, trot through the recruitment process \u2013 anyone who asks about overtime or the finer legal details of what they\u2019re being asked to do is summarily ejected and only those who put in the extra hours at lockpicking class can expect to make the grade \u2013 Don has found his people and we can get into the meat of the thing.<\/p>\n