Legends true story: Are the characters based on real people in Netflix drama?

The Gold creator Neil Forsyth is back to dig out another incredible true story from Britain's history, in new six-part Netflix series Legends.

This new story centres on a group of customs officers, led by Steve Coogan's Don, who go undercover in some of Britain's most dangerous drugs gangs in the 1990s, in order to bring them down from the inside.

It's a remarkable story, but how closely does the series actually stick to the facts, and are the central characters based on real individuals or have they been fictionalised?

Read on for everything you need to know about the real-life inspiration for Netflix drama Legends.

Is Legends based on a true story?

It is. The series has been based on an actual programme that was set up, in which Customs advertised within the agency for people who were willing to undertake a dangerous mission of going undercover into the drugs world.

This was established since the organisation had been charged by Margaret Thatcher's government in the early 1990s to stop the flow of heroin into Britain, as an epidemic was increasingly taking shape.

Resources for this programme are said to have been very limited, meaning that those involved had to be inventive and creative, using vehicles that had been impounded and jewellery that had been seized.

As part of the programme, more than 12 tonnes of heroin was seized, equitable to a street value of over £1 billion.

Is Legends based on a book?

As is noted in the credits of the series, Legends has been "inspired by The Betrayer: How An Undercover Unit Infiltrated The Global Drug Trade by Guy Stanton and Peter Walsh".

The book was published in 2022 and is available to purchase now.

The series has subsequently been inspired by further research conducted by the show's creator Neil Forsyth and his team, and, as with all dramas, includes some elements which have been fictionalised.

What has creator Neil Forsyth said about the true story behind Legends?

Speaking on how he approached bringing the real-life story of the Legends programme to the screen, the show's creator, Neil Forsyth said of this show: "I started by speaking with some of the real people involved.

"I conducted lots of interviews, some with people who were happy to talk to me publicly, others who needed to be a bit more clandestine. I have a great researcher – Adam Fenn – who spent months trawling through all sorts of records, from court transcripts to newspaper archives, but it’s a largely unknown story.

"The more I listened, the more extraordinary the tale revealed itself to be. As a writer, the true excitement lies in the story's complexity; the number of surprising worlds and people it involves. When you’re writing something across six episodes, you look for complexity and surprise, and this story delivered both.

"I did need to condense and simplify it, because otherwise it would be extremely complicated and we’d have far too many characters. It’s about working out how to take the true story and make it manageable in terms of six episodes of television, because real life is very messy.

"So we did the research, gathered up everything that happened and all the people who were involved, and decided which characters to concentrate on. In some cases these are composites of real-life people, to give a real breadth of experience, while being completely true to the spirit of what happened and the major incidents that occurred."

Are the characters in Legends based on real people?

Given that the series is based partly on the book by Guy Stanton, he is very much a real individual. He is played in the series by Tom Burke.

"Guy’s an extraordinary man, and is very much at the forefront of the show," Forsyth said. "His character goes deepest into Legend, and the audience really sees the effects it has on him. The real Guy worked undercover as a Legend for many, many years, along with maybe a half dozen other people, and really ‘lived the life’.

"I’ve met him a number of times now, and met his family, and he’s opened up more and more about the emotional journey that he went through. I think he would fully admit that the undercover experience had both negative and positive outcomes for him and his family.

"When you have an experience like that, it shapes you for the rest of your life. I think over time some of these experiences have become easier for him to manage, but it definitely defines how he looks at the world.

"He still takes security precautions to this day, for example. It’s just fascinating to imagine this normal bloke living such an extreme undercover existence, which has been really interesting to explore, as a writer."

However, when it comes to a lot of the rest of the major figures, while they have been inspired by a variety of real-life figures, they are not themselves real individuals.

For instance, Forsyth said that Hayley Squires's character, Kate, "represents a lot of the Legends I spoke to who came from working-class backgrounds, and who found themselves operating in working-class areas".

He continued: "They saw first hand the devastation that the drugs were causing, which gave them some of the personal motivation that drove them. A lot of the real life Legends also talked about the camaraderie they had with each other, which I think Hayley really lands with the lovely dry humour she brings to the role of Kate."

The same is true for Aml Ameen's Bailey, who was "directly inspired by some fascinating real people".

"What I find really interesting with Bailey’s character is watching him grow in confidence throughout the series," Forsyth said. "He’s got a unique position in the show, in how he looks at the work that the Legends are doing. Without giving too much away, he plays a really integral part at the end of the series, by slipping into Legend seamlessly."

Meanwhile, when it comes to Jasmine Blackborow's Erin, Forsyth said that she "represents the Legends who worked on the research component of the job, and on securing the supporting paperwork to create realistic Legends".

He continued: "It wasn't enough to simply act the part when working undercover; you needed to be backed up by paperwork, administration, licences, bills... All the elements that dress a normal person's life, in addition to the job-specific research. As we discuss in the show, the Legends had access to almost every area of government paperwork.

"Erin is responsible for extracting all that information and using it to support those operating out in the field. This also allows the Legends to fight criminality while staying within the law, which is difficult to do. The lines inevitably get blurred, which leads to some of the conflict that we embrace within the show."

Steve Coogan's character Don, likewise isn't a real person, but he has been "very much inspired by two real life people whom I researched at length; one of whom I also interviewed at length," Forsyth said. "Don is someone who’s been there and done it in terms of undercover work, and takes the Legends through their training.

"He also then has to manage the team. That in many ways is the hardest part of that job; managing people who are in the field, facing all the psychological pressures and the conflicts within the team."

The characters on the other side of the law, such as Numan Acar's Hakan and Tom Hughes's character, are also fictional, although an attempt to be representative of figures who were operating at the time.

"I think it’s very important that all your characters are rounded to some degree, and capable of surprise," Forsyth said of creating these characters. "It doesn’t matter if they’re on the right or the wrong side of the law, or somewhere in-between. You have to find that nuance to make them interesting.

"You don’t have to sympathise with your character, but you do have to understand them, and they need to be human beings, even if they’re an overtly criminal character. When you’re making a crime drama, characters who can move between both worlds are particularly important, and Mylonas is one of those characters.

"While he is a longstanding informer to the Customs department, particularly to Blake, he also has one foot firmly entrenched in the criminal world."

Legends is available to stream on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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