One ex-detective calls the BBC’s The Gold ‘a travesty’, but most screen versions of true crime play fast and loose with the facts
It was, so the introduction to The Gold suggests, “the largest robbery in world history and changed British crime and policing for ever”. We are also told that the six-part BBC series was “inspired by real events” but “some characters and elements have been created and changed for dramatic purposes”.
So how much of the re-enactment of the Brink’s-Mat £26m robbery of gold bullion in 1983 is true – one former detective described it as a “travesty” – and why do some major crimes make it on to the screen and others not?
