Creator Neil Forsyth and Tom Burke in Legends – Picture Credits: Netflix
If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Netflix’s upcoming British crime drama Legends, you aren’t alone. The true-story-inspired series promises a tense, immersive dive into the dangerous world of undercover operations in the 1990s.
For a complete rundown of what the series is all about, you can check out our main preview covering the Netflix release date, cast, and plot for Legends. But to tide you over ahead of its release on May 7th, creator and writer Neil Forsyth and director Brady Hood have peeled back the curtain on the show’s unbelievable true origins, the complex characters, and the vibrant, chaotic recreation of 1990s Britain.
Here’s everything the creative minds behind the series had to say.
Note: These quotes were provided courtesy of Netflix.
What exactly is a “Legend”?
The series draws its title from the clandestine world of undercover work. As creator Neil Forsyth explains, “When you go undercover, you create a false identity, and that false identity is called your ‘legend’. You’re either in legend or you’re out of legend, which sounds very simple, but as our characters find out, when those lines get blurred, things become very dangerous.”
The story itself kicks off in 1990, during a time when Britain was teetering on the edge of a recession and battling a massive heroin epidemic. With Margaret Thatcher putting direct pressure on the Home Office to stamp out the crisis, Her Majesty’s Customs had to get creative. They decided to infiltrate the gangs from the inside.
“Resources were very limited, so they had to be extremely inventive and creative,” Forsyth notes. “They would use vehicles that had been impounded, and jewellery that had been seized, for example; constantly working in this sort of ‘Boy’s Own’ way to solve a great international problem. They went the extra mile and made huge sacrifices, fired up by the very worthy cause of stopping heroin coming into Britain.”
To adapt this sprawling, messy true story into a tight six-episode television series, Forsyth spent months interviewing the real people involved and trawling through newspaper archives and court transcripts. “The more I listened, the more extraordinary the tale revealed itself to be,” he shared. “When you’re writing something across six episodes, you look for complexity and surprise, and this story delivered both.”
Picture Credit: Netflix
We recently broke down how the Legends cast teased their own roles, but both Forsyth and Hood were eager to praise their leading players, particularly Tom Burke, who steps into the shoes of Guy Stanton.
When we first meet Guy, he’s a highly capable but painfully bored traditional Customs Officer. “Guy is an introspective character; sort of a natural loner, which ultimately helps him in what he sets out to do as a Legend,” Forsyth says. “He’s extremely capable physically… And he’s very clever and quick-witted, which is another vital quality to this work.”
Director Brady Hood was blown away by Burke’s layered performance, noting the danger of the character losing himself in the false identity. “What I found very interesting were the nuances and intricacies he brought to the dialect and the physicality of switching between the real Guy, and the legend,” Hood remarks. “With Guy there’s always that feeling that he’s enjoying it enough, but if he starts to enjoy it too much, he could break what he already has.”
Surrounding Guy is a rich ensemble of fellow undercover operatives, including Kate, played by Hayley Squires. Forsyth highlights that Kate represents the working-class officers who saw the devastation of the drug trade firsthand, adding that Squires lands the role perfectly with her “lovely dry humour.”
On the other side of the law, the series refuses to rely on binary heroes and villains. Forsyth insists on nuanced characterization, pointing to Mylonas, a longstanding informer with one foot firmly in the criminal world. Hood also highlighted Eddie, played by Johnny Harris, as a standout: “He’s an enforcer for Carter [the drug lord of the North]; his right-hand man; his pit-bull. Eddie faces one of the strongest moral dilemmas in the show, which I think brings great heart to it.”
Picture Credit: Netflix
Capturing the “Ugly Good” of 1990s Britain
When it came to the visual style of Legends, Hood was determined to avoid the classic, sepia-toned nostalgia often applied to recent history. He wanted the audience to feel the immediacy and danger of the moment.
“I didn’t want to look back at the ‘90s through a sepia lens,” Hood explains. “From what I recall of the ‘90s, it was vibrant and exciting; tracksuits and pills and dance music. I wanted to capture that exuberant nature… costumes that were almost ugly, but kind of cool.”
Hood describes the overall aesthetic as “cinematic naturalism.” The production relied almost exclusively on practical locations to heighten the reality of the show. “There’s something very powerful in the fact that the bakers around the corner may have been a drug den round the back, without us knowing,” Hood says. “It was all kind of hidden within the world we lived in, and that’s what makes it more dangerous and more tense. It’s right in the middle of the city or in the middle of the town.”
To keep the tension sky-high, Hood and his director of photography kept the camera moving with the characters. “We never had the camera in the room before they entered; it goes in with them, so we feel the tension of the moment, as they’re stepping into the lion’s den, playing their legends. The characters don’t get a break; when you’re infiltrating, you don’t get to step back and slow down.”
At its core, Legends is about the perilous search for purpose. As Hood beautifully summarizes, “It is slightly unbelievable, that five customs officers who were very much under-resourced and under-prepared infiltrated the biggest drug gangs in the UK. I love that the five protagonists who are vessels into this world are like you and I. They’re ordinary people, put into extraordinary circumstances.”
Are you excited to check out Legends when it lands on Netflix? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
