Legends is a British crime thriller television series written and created by Neil Forsyth and produced by his Tannadice Pictures production company. It is a dramatisation of the true story of undercover British customs investigators who infiltrated the drug world in the early 1990s, and the cast includes Tom Burke, Steve Coogan, Hayley Squires, and Aml Ameen. The series premiered on Netflix on 7 May 2026 and received positive reviews from critics and high viewing figures.
In August 2026, the series was renewed for a second season.
Contents
Premise
In the early 1990s, Her Majesty's Customs and Excise was losing its battle with drug smuggling across Britain's borders. In a top-secret operation, a small team of customs employees was sent undercover with new identities and told to infiltrate Britain's most dangerous drug gangs.
Cast and characters
Tom Burke as Guy
Steve Coogan as Don Clarke
Hayley Squires as Kate
Aml Ameen as Bailey
Jasmine Blackborow as Erin
Douglas Hodge as Angus Blake
Charlotte Ritchie as Sophie
Tom Hughes as Declan Carter
Johnny Harris as Eddie McKee
Gerald Kyd as Mylonas
Numan Acar as Hakan
Joshua Samuels as Zeki
Stephen Walters as Jed
Kem Hassan as Aziz
Youssef Tounzi as Jawed
Thomas Coombes as Shaun
Alex Jennings as the Home Secretary
Con O'Neill as Arthur Goodwin
Deepak Verma as Ayub Afridi
Robbie O'Neill as Danny O'Connell
Cecily Cleeve as Lily
Sue Jenkins as Jan
Production
Development
The six-part series is created and written by Neil Forsyth, and was commissioned by Netflix in August 2024. Forsyth and Ben Farrell are executive producers for All3Media-backed Tannadice Pictures, and Richard Bradley is an executive producer for Lion Television. Directors on the series are Brady Hood and Julian Holmes, the series producer is Charlie Leech, and the story producer is Rhiannon Forsyth.
The series is inspired by the 2022 true crime book The Betrayer: How An Undercover Unit Infiltrated the Global Drug Trade, by Guy Stanton and Peter Walsh, as well as extensive research and interviews that Neil Forsyth conducted with Stanton and other former undercover Customs agents. Stanton worked for HM Customs for 23 years, ten of which were spent in an undercover unit set up in 1991 to thwart a large drug smuggling operation. He writes in the prologue of the book that it is all based on actual events, with names and some details changed to protect the identities of the operatives.
On 24 August 2026, the series was renewed for a second season.
Casting
The cast is led by Steve Coogan, Tom Burke (playing actual undercover Customs agent Guy Stanton and Hayley Squires, and includes Aml Ameen, Jasmine Blackborow, Charlotte Ritchie, Douglas Hodge, Tom Hughes, Johnny Harris, and Gerald Kyd.
Filming
Principal photography took place in April and May 2025 in Farnborough, Camberley, Acton, and Muswell Hill. Other scenes were filmed at the Nabisco Shredded Wheat Factory in Welwyn Garden City, Custom House, and the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.
Foreign filming was undertaken in various locations in Morocco.
Release
The series premiered on Netflix on 7 May 2026 with six episodes.
On 14 May, a week after its release, Legends became the most-watched Netflix show worldwide. After ten days it had reached ten million viewers, was number one in 11 countries and in the top ten in 67 countries.
After 28 days, Legends had been watched by over 5.7m viewers in the UK alone, which made it the most watched scripted show across all British networks over the period.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 22 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Legends gets the basics of the crime genre right, bringing in clear-cut drama to a daringly real tale and imbuing its narrative with the right balance of respect and spectacle." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the series a score of 75 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
The Sunday Times declared "At last, Britain has a cop show to rival The Wire" and said Legends was "that rare thing, a remarkable show that tells the story of an entire era" while praising Forsyth's "remarkable ability to capture minor characters’ humanity with immense economy and speed".
In a five-star review, The Financial Times said, "This is outstanding TV, elegant and composed, and it does not let its grip loosen for a second” and praised the "impeccable ensemble cast". In another five-star review, the Radio Times said that Forsyth had "struck gold again" and said his "skill for paring a narrative down to just the fun parts makes this irresistible".
Variety called Legends "a gripping tale of found potential and assumed identity". Collider said that Legends "might be the most watchable crime drama Netflix puts out this year" and praised Forsyth's "knack for turning forgotten chapters of British history into propulsive television". The Times called Legends "superb" and "filled with adrenaline" while The Wall Street Journal praised Coogan's "splendid performance" as a "sober, wounded portrait of a man who has been damaged and knows it". Digital Spy called Legends "bitingly tense" and praised Charlotte Ritchie's "quietly stunning performance".
Screen Rant called Legends a "insightful and gripping masterclass in suspense", The Press and Journal said, “Forsyth executes it with style, tension, narrative perfection and a real sense of the backdrop he’s set it against” and that “this is the closest thing we’ve had to a British version of The Wire”, while the Daily Mail called it an "impassioned anti-drugs thriller".The Herald called Forsyth “Scotland’s finest screenwriter” .
Legends was also well received internationally. The Irish Times called Legends “excellent” and a “gripping, seat-of-the-pants thriller” in which Coogan is “in his element”. In Spain, Mindies said, “Without copying the codes of The Wire, Legends shares with it the desire to x-ray the phenomenon of drug trafficking from multiple angles, including the perspective of the criminals themselves and the social fabric that sustains them”, while El Periódico said “Episode by episode, Forsyth once again clearly reveals himself as one of the great crime drama writers”. In France, Télérama praised the "gripping plot" and AlloCine called Legends a "thriller as rhythmic as it is exciting" and said it had a realism "rare in detective fiction". In Argentina, Micropsia Cine called Legends "Netflix’s standout police drama of the year". In India, The Week magazine gave Legends five stars, calling it "incredible" and "a fitting companion piece to The Wire". In Australia, where Legends topped the Netflix charts, The Australian called it “a sharp, elegantly engineered drama …presented in a hard, tough, move-it-along-at-all-costs fashion”
