How Neil Forsyth turned Britain’s undercover Customs officers into Netflix crime drama Legends

Neil Forsyth goes undercover with DQ to discuss Legends, Netflix’s true crime drama about Customs officials infiltrating drug gangs in 1990s Britain. After two seasons of The Gold, the BBC drama centring on the consequences of the monumental Brink’s-Mat robbery in 1983, writer Neil Forsyth wasn’t planning on developing another factual drama for his next project. Then three years ago, he heard about Guy Stanton, a former Customs official who worked undercover for more than a decade to help bring down international drug smuggling. Stanton later revealed much of his work in his 2022 book The Betrayer. Forsyth tracked Stanton down and went for lunch with him, and was blown away by his “extraordinary” revelations. “It was a beautiful, sunny day in a very leafy village, in a nice restaurant, and I was hearing this older, very unassuming man tell these incredible stories about his younger career and his younger life,” Forsyth tells DQ. “I just thought it was really tantalising. Then I met some other ‘legends’ that he introduced me to – I drove around and visited these people and got to know them a little bit, and maybe won their trust, to a degree. It was just a fascinating story.” The Scottish writer subsequently began to develop a series about a group of Customs employees going undercover to infiltrate Britain’s biggest drug gangs, while using false identities known as ‘legends.’ The resulting drama is now streaming on Netflix. Set in the early 1990s, when Her Majesty’s Customs and … Continue reading How Neil Forsyth turned Britain’s undercover Customs officers into Netflix crime drama Legends →