The Gold

Caporegime
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29 Jan 2008
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Decided to get a TV license again and give some BBC stuff a try, this was well worth watching, very binge-worthy:


I'm a fan of police/detective stuff and this being based on the true story of the biggest (at the time) robbery in the world makes it pretty interesting/compelling viewing regardless.

Some minor gripes (I loved the show so this isn't meant to take away too much for that, it's well worth watching); Noye's character is too nice, he's portrayed almost like some sort of young and more successful Del Boy type... the real Noye seems like a much nastier/angry individual who has flipped out and killed people in the heat of the moment, both related to this story and his known murder many years later where he stabbed a complete stranger to death in a road rage incident.

Every criminal with a regional accent seems to be portrayed as some sort of class warrior and has something to say about England being divided by class; yes Mr Writer we get the really subtle message/subtext you're trying to put across here. They could have just left things like the scene with the solicitor (a fictional character sort of based on a real person) putting a ring into the mud in an Eastern part of the Thames in... instead, there is a lot of surplus dialogue about it to the point that it becomes a bit distracting at times.

Another fictional character they've added is the female detective and of course, she is portrayed as the (now so standard it's become a bit of a trope) "girl boss" type which allows for a bit of forced commentary not just about class (again) but also sexism in the 80s. Some of it gets a bit cliched like girl boss detective demands that she switches seats and is allowed to drive in the middle of a surveillance operation, girl boss, of course, makes some fundamental discoveries that are key to the case etc. It just seems a bit odd given this is a real story involving real people that they just make up a key member of the police team.

It does have the potential for a second season too, there are a few glimpses of another character in Spain and it's not clear who he is...
 
It did heavily play on class and agreed, a bit too much, to me it came across more the upper class / old money vs absolutely everyone else, not just the working class at the very bottom. One rule for them, one for everyone else.

As for Noye, he was clearly quite unpleasant as shown with later events and I thought he came across more as playing up to his working class credentials just for the juries, rather than being / or thinking of himself as a working class warrior - or portrayed as a Robin Hood character as the Daily Mail bizzarely claimed.
( per the TV series, it worked the first time with a Jury , failed badly the second - I dont know how correct that is )

Palmer was portrayed as more of a nice guy that got greedy and the whole thing seemed a bit soft on him, given his later exploits with timeshare fraud and owning a big chunk of Playa De Las Americas on Tenerife, it seemed that he had a lot more "gangster" credentials than shown in the TV series, particularly given his sticky ending.

Interestingly, an old work mate took redundancy in the mid 90's, moved to Tenerfie and worked for John Palmer, managing a bowling alley in Playa De Las Americas. Palmer had his fingers in quite a few business's at that time, bars etc and the island was swamped with his timeshare reps, remember getting hassled by them on every street corner . I visited my friend in Tennerife a couple of times 94-97 ish before the whole timeshare thing collapsed and he told me a few things about his boss, had no idea who Palmer was. Nothing that isnt known through trials etc, but was quite the eyeopener to hear about.
 
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It did heavily play on class and agreed, a bit too much, to me it came across more the upper class / old money vs absolutely everyone else, not just the working class at the very bottom. One rule for them, one for everyone else.

As for Noye, he was clearly quite unpleasant as shown with later events and I thought he came across more as playing up to his working class credentials just for the juries, rather than being / or thinking of himself as a working class warrior - or portrayed as a Robin Hood character as the Daily Mail bizzarely claimed.
( per the TV series, it worked the first time with a Jury , failed badly the second - I dont know how correct that is )

Palmer was portrayed as more of a nice guy that got greedy and the whole thing seemed a bit soft on him, given his later exploits with timeshare fraud and owning a big chunk of Playa De Las Americas on Tenerife, it seemed that he had a lot more "gangster" credentials than shown in the TV series, particularly given his sticky ending.

Interestingly, an old work mate took redundancy in the mid 90's, moved to Tenerfie and worked for John Palmer, managing a bowling alley in Playa De Las Americas. Palmer had his fingers in quite a few business's at that time, bars etc and the island was swamped with his timeshare reps, remember getting hassled by them on every street corner . I visited my friend in Tennerife a couple of times 94-97 ish before the whole timeshare thing collapsed and he told me a few things about his boss, had no idea who Palmer was. Nothing that isnt known through trials etc, but was quite the eyeopener to hear about.

Thought it was common knowledge John Palmer was a nasty piece of work and you dont get to be a gangland boss without blood on your hands.
 
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Thought it was common knowledge John Palmer was a nasty piece of work and you dont get to be a gangland boss without blood on your hands.

Probably true, but I had no idea who he was, am sure there was lots of reporting around his trial etc in 87, but i'd left school in 86 and was more interested in going out to pubs etc than reading newspapers cover to cover, religously watching the news. It was pre-internet so, once news happened, it wasnt really in your face again , unless you had some sort of interest in underground / gangster types, which I didnt.
 
Probably true, but I had no idea who he was, am sure there was lots of reporting around his trial etc in 87, but i'd left school in 86 and was more interested in going out to pubs etc than reading newspapers cover to cover, religously watching the news. It was pre-internet so, once news happened, it wasnt really in your face again , unless you had some sort of interest in underground / gangster types, which I didnt.

i was more meaning that I am surprised if they have made him "nicer" in this series. He was a nasty piece work. Think regional version of the Kray twins.
 
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i was more meaning that I am surprised if they have made him "nicer" in this series. He was a nasty piece work. Think regional version of the Kray twins.

Yeah, he's definitely not portrayed as a regional version of the Kray twins in this! He's portrayed as some nice West Country* gold dealer guy who is a bit dodgy and gets roped into the thing by Noye. *Even though he's from the midlands/Solihull and so would have surely had more of a Brummie accent.
 
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