A starry cast including Hugh Bonneville, Jack Lowden and Dominic Cooper has started filming The Gold, a drama about the notorious Brink”s-Mat robbery in 1983.

For delivery to BBC One and Paramount+, the 6 x 60 series comes from writer Neil Forsyth with directors Aneil Karia and Lawrence Gough calling the shots. Charlotte Spencer, Tom Cullen, Emun Elliott, Sean Harris, Ellora Torchia and Stefanie Martini are also among the cast.

On 26 November 1983, six armed men broke into the Brink”s-Mat security depot near London”s Heathrow Airport, and inadvertently stumbled across gold bullion worth £26m. What started as ‘a typical Old Kent Road armed robbery’ according to detectives at the time, became a seminal event in British criminal history, remarkable not only for the scale of the theft, at the time the biggest in world history, but for its wider legacy.

The disposal of the bullion caused the birth of large-scale international money laundering, provided the dirty money that helped fuel the London Docklands property boom, united blue and white collar criminals and left controversy and murder in its wake.

Tommy Bulfin, BBC commissioning editor, said: “The fact that we have assembled such a talented and exciting ensemble cast is testament to Neil”s incisive interrogation of one of the most infamous robberies in British history and the remarkable events which came in its wake. And to have the brilliant Aneil Karia join fresh from his Oscar win is the icing on the cake…”

Ben Farrell, executive producer, added: “Tannadice Pictures are excited to be working on their debut drama with such an incredible ensemble cast alongside the BBC and Paramount+ to tell, for the first time, the full, immersive, thrilling story of the Brink”s-Mat gold crime.”

The Gold is a co-production between Tannadice Pictures (its first commission), an Objective Fiction partner, and VIS, Paramount”s international studio division. Charlie Leech produces; exec producers are Bulfin, Forsyth, Farrell, Kate Laffey and Claire Sowerby-Sheppard