Have you ever heard of the ordinary customs officials from the 90s, who took down some of the most notorious drug gangs of the era with little training, to save the UK from the heroin flooding into it?
If you haven't, you're not alone, because it's one of the most incredible true events nobody seems to know about. But thanks to Netflix picking up the story for a gripping six-part thriller, the world will finally get to find out what really happened.
Airing from May 7, Legends is based on the 2022 book The Betrayer: How an Undercover Unit Infiltrated the Global Drug Trade, written by Guy Stanton. Guy worked in customs for 35 years and worked for 11 years as one of the undercover officers shown in the series.
The book has been adapted for TV by Neil Forsyth who wrote the brilliant The Gold, covering the Brinks-Mat robbery. This makes Legends a show that all dedicated true crime fans need to add to their watch list, who can watch as unlikely heroes infiltrate the world's biggest drug gangs, seizing heroin worth over £1 billion.
The true story behind Legends
Back in the early Nineties, the UK had a serious drug problem, with heroin flooding into the country and being distributed to the streets through major crime networks.
Margaret Thatcher knew rapid action was required as Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise became increasingly powerless to stop the barrage of drugs getting into the country.
Thatcher ordered the Investigation Division to undertake the top secret mission of recruiting some of the their officers, to then send the newly formed team to infiltrate some of the world's biggest and most notorious drug gangs.
Incredibly, these recruited to the programme had no existing background skills - they had zero intelligence experience and were given next to no training for the job. They were customs officials, whose main role up until this point had been looking through suitcases.
The newly created anti-drug team were given false identities, which are known to those in the industry as "legends." They were then sent out to do their best job, and really did become legends - but ones we're only just hearing about.
There were limited resources available to the undercover customs officers, meaning they had to get creative with what they had available to them while taking down the criminal underworld.
They are said to have used vehicles that had been impounded and jewellery that had previously been seized, in the absence of budget for anything they needed.
The success of the secret mission speaks for itself, with the team getting their hands on more than 12 tonnes of heroin, with a street value of over £1 billion.
Steve Coogan plays Don, the senior officer tasked with recruiting the customs employees willing to take such a huge personal risk. Tom Burke takes on the role of Guy Stanton, the man who wrote the book on which the series is based.
the name 'Guy Stanton' is a pseudonym, and the real man behind the persona remains concerned about his safety to this day, after his role in the secret operation meant he came into contact with so many dangerous people.
He did however, give an interview to offer real insight into what his life was like at the time of being a customs officer turned undercover operator.
"You’re constantly looking around, you’re in a world of betrayal all the time, and you’re in a world where you’re suspected all the time," Guy tells The Times.
He adds, "It’s very difficult to come to terms with. It takes you time to decompress." Now in his late 60s, Guy now works as a private investigator.
But he still finds it hard to let go of the behaviours that became ingrained in him on the job. "I’ve not gone to that world for a long time now but he certainly left traits with me, some of them silly traits that my family will laugh at," he explains.
Guy adds, "We go into a restaurant and it’s a standard joke that I’ll sit with my back to a wall or in a corner looking at the door. That was because I did it for so long to avoid anybody just rushing in on you."
The things he saw and did have had an inevitable long-term affect on him, and Guy says the "terrible things and terrible people" he encountered have shattered his optimism, leaving him a "glass-half-empty person."
He concludes, "You just look at the news and rather than thinking, we’ll get over this, you think the worst. It did affect me, to know these people are there, to know that that world exists and continues to exist."
Legends is currently streaming on Netflix.
