The Gold: Second series of BBC hit is fan fiction rather than true crime

There was a cracking scene on The Gold as crafty ex-con Charlie Miller whisked away stolen Brink’s-Mat ingots worth £16million in the back of an ambulance right before DCI Brian Boyce’s eyes. South London villain Charlie (Sam Spruell) had stashed the gold bars in an abandoned Cornish tin mine before he rubbed the Old Bill’s noses in it with his daring bravado. Except it didn’t happen. Miller never existed – he’s a composite character dreamed up by writer Neil Forsyth – and using the mines as storage facilities is an unproven theory. Dramatists often twist reality in the name of “artistic licence”.

In the first series of this superior BBC1 crime drama, Forsyth conjured up the character of Nicki Jennings – a London DI who made all the key deductions – even though the Flying Squad in 1983 contained no female detectives whatsoever. He also painted double-killer Kenny Noye as a roguish Jack The Lad class warrior with a chip on his shoulder the size of Das Kapital. TV Kenny charmed all and sundry, only turning nasty when a jury found him guilty…

The Brink’s-Mat robbery was Britain’s biggest gold heist – the underworld version of winning the Lottery. Six violent armed blaggers hit a secure storage facility near Heathrow expecting to nab £1million in readies. Instead, they stumbled on gold bullion worth more than £26million. Series one showed how Noye and his cronies distributed the booty, and ended with Hugh Bonneville’s Boyce realising half the takings were still unaccounted for. Working on rumours and suspicions, Forsyth’s second series shows what might have happened to it, not what did.

With Noye temporarily off-screen, the key players are Miller and John “Goldfinger” Palmer (Tom Cullen), who we see conning pensioners into buying Tenerife timeshares, employing an armed minder, and dumbly agreeing to appear in the Sunday Times Rich List – re-igniting the Met’s desire to collar him. Invented new characters adding spice include spiteful Isle Of Man lawyer Douglas Baxter and posh money launderer Logan Campbell. La-di-dah Logan sees himself, Baxter and Miller as “boarding school, grammar school and borstal” underscoring his predestined superiority. Naturally, he is quickly outwitted by borstal-boy Miller – a classic Forsyth class-war scene. Once again, his sympathies seem to lie mostly with the hoods. Forsyth is a fine writer and the plot grips, but The Gold is better perceived as crime fan-fiction rather than true-crime.

Why do so many people root for the villains? My theory is that in a world where energy companies, councils and chancellors feel free to pick our pockets at will, the thought of a little guy getting one over on corporations and the authorities is mildly uplifting. Even if the little guy is a ruthless thug.

Netflix’s Dept Q is a different kind of crime thriller, notable for starring TV’s scruffiest detective since Columbo. Matthew Goode’s DCI Carl Morck could have been dressed by Jackson Lamb. He also happens to be the most cantankerous copper since Rebus and the most morose one since PC Henry Snow on Softly, Softly. Although there is good reason for that – Morck nearly died in a shooting that left his oppo permanently disabled. He’s also lumbered with his ex-wife’s teenage son. The show is daft on several levels, not least because Morck’s motley crew are working on cold cases in a converted men’s changing room with urinals still intact. But the writing quality elevates it. It’s a well-constructed mystery with unexpected twists. Morck’s Syrian sidekick Akram (Alexej Manvelov) is good value too. He’s a little like Star Trek’s Mr Spock – calm, smart and logical, with a capacity for effective violence when necessary.

Based on a Danish Nordic noir book and film series, Dept Q has been relocated from Copenhagen to Edinburgh and revolves around the mysterious disappearance of gung-ho crown prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), who always “had one foot in the inferno” and had inexplicably vanished from a ferry four years earlier. Pacing aside, the writing sparkles, it has a strong cast, and Goode is terrific. Talking mysteries, when will BBC1 change the title of Who Do You Think You Are? to Why Do You Think We Care? And given that The Soap Awards got a measly 1.5million viewers, why on earth do ITV bother with it?

Good old Jeremy Clarkson proved there is nothing funnier than rage. In the final chaotic episodes of Clarkson’s Farm (Prime) Clarkson let rip furiously at several deserving targets including, but not limited to, Instagram influencers, his farm manager Kaleb Cooper, the weather, Richard Hammond, and Sir Keir Starmer (multiple times). It’s been suggested that Starmer and Max Headroom are interchangeable. Ridiculous. One is an irritatingly mechanical character powered by make-believe, the other is Max Headroom… TV’s best comedy ranters? Frank Costanza (Seinfeld), Alf Garnett (Till Death Do Us Part) and Malcolm Tucker (The Thick Of It).