BBC’s hit heist drama The Gold is returning to TV tomorrow night (Sunday, June 8) as series two premiers. It has been over two years since the first season hit screens in February 2023, following the incredible real-life story of the biggest robbery in the world at the time – the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery.
The robbery changed the crime world forever, and also helped shape modern London as we know it, being directly involved with the regeneration of the London Docklands and the creation of the Canary Wharf we see today.
As we prepare for Season 2, let’s unpack the real-life heist that inspired the show, how its ripple effects reached all the way to London’s skyline, and what we might expect in the next chapter of the series.
The real Brink’s-Mat robbery: A £26 million mistake that changed crime forever
It began in the early hours of November 26, 1983, at a warehouse near Heathrow Airport. A gang of six men, tipped off by insider Anthony Black, expected to find a relatively small fortune in cash. Instead, they stumbled across something far more valuable: 6,800 bars of gold bullion, uncut diamonds, and over £100,000 in cash. The total haul came to £26 million — worth more than £90 million today.
What followed was chaos. Not because the gang didn’t pull off the job — they did, and in just under two hours. The trouble was what to do with the gold. Melting it down, disguising its origin, and laundering the proceeds proved to be far more complicated than expected.
Enter Kenneth Noye, a well-connected criminal and money launderer, who helped distribute the gold by smelting it with copper to disguise the purity of the original bullion. Through this method, the gold was passed through a network that reached far beyond UK borders.
But Noye’s role came at a cost: during a police surveillance operation in 1985, he stabbed undercover officer DC John Fordham 10 times when he came into his garden and disturbed his dogs. DC Fordham died two hours later. Though Noye was acquitted of murder because he argued it was self-defence in court, he was jailed for 14 years for handling stolen goods.
To this day, over half the gold has never been recovered. It’s widely believed that much of it re-entered the legitimate market, meaning a wedding ring or watch you bought in the 1990s may well contain a bit of stolen history.
How East London was built on Brink’s-Mat gold
Perhaps most fascinating is the theory — now widely accepted — that the proceeds from the Brink’s-Mat heist helped fund the transformation of London’s Docklands.
In the early 1980s, the London Docklands were abandoned and derelict. But, as dirty money needed to be cleaned and invested, developers — some knowingly, many not — accepted large sums of cash. It’s believed some of this money found its way into early real estate ventures in Wapping and the Isle of Dogs.
By 1988, construction began on Canary Wharf, with One Canada Square becoming the tallest building in Britain in 1991. What was once industrial dereliction became a gleaming financial district. And while the government’s London Docklands Development Corporation deserves credit for the regeneration, there’s no ignoring the shadows of Brink’s-Mat in its foundations.
What to Expect in Season 2 of The Gold
In the first season, we saw how the heist unravelled and the ensuing massively complex task of money laundering and were introduced to the cast of the real-life crew that pulled off the incredible robbery. Season 2 picks up where we left off: with the authorities trying to track down the remaining gold, and criminals seeking new ways to wash their money.
The dirty money found its way all across the world so we could see police tracking offshore accounts and other dodgy investments. Noye’s killing of DC Fordham was yet to happen in the first season so we can expect this to take centre stage.
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