'Gold' spins heist tale into profile of cops and robbers

PBS' new series takes an old-fashioned dive into an infamous London robbery.

- ROBERT LLOYD TELEVISION CRITIC

CHARLOTTE Spencer, left, Emun Elliott and Hugh Bonneville in "The Gold."

On Nov. 26, 1983, six men robbed a warehouse serving London's Heathrow Airport.

Hoping to find £1 million worth of foreign currency, they found instead 6,800 gold bars, worth £26 million in 1983 money a record-setting robbery at the time under the temporary supervision of Brink's-Mat. (A union of the American security firm and a British transport outfit.) This event has been transmuted into “The Gold,” an involving British drama that premiered here Sunday on PBS.

The robbery itself takes up little screen time; the question on the criminal side becomes how to turn three tons of gold into cash, and for the police, one of recovering the loot and bringing the villains to justice. The cops and the criminals overlap here and there, a point screenwriter Neil Forsyth does not want you to miss, and is a particular bee in the bonnet of upright Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville), self-contained but always ready to speak his mind. (He is also “infuriated” by what people get wrong about jazz, which he likens to police work.)

DETECTIVE Chief Superintendent Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville) recruits a team to find the thieves.