Steve Coogan Excels in Netflix Drama

In the parlance of undercover operatives, a “legend” is the false identity one concocts to infiltrate a criminal network. “Your legend has to come from you, or it won’t work. Your legend has to be part of you, or it won’t work,” explains Don (Steve Coogan), a British customs agent charged with training a group of amateur spies to infiltrate heroin rings in the twilight of the Thatcher era. “And when legends don’t work, people die.” 

“Legends” is also the name of the compact, compelling Netflix series Don kicks off by assembling a ragtag crew of secretaries, airport security officers and other understimulated misfits from his agency’s ranks for the mission at hand. Created and written by Neil Forsyth (“The Gold”), “Legends” is loosely based on a real set of customs operations in the late 1980s that intercepted several tons of narcotics with limited budget and resources. But together with directors Brady Hood and Julian Holmes as well as a uniformly strong cast, led by a gravel-voiced Coogan and Tom Burke (“Furiosa”) as Don’s star pupil, Forsyth makes “Legends” a gripping tale of found potential and assumed identity.

In a show of its brisk, no-nonsense pace, “Legends” has Don whittle a busful of applicants down to just four recruits in the first 15 minutes of the premiere. (And that timestamp includes an economical cold open that cuts between two overdose deaths at opposite ends of the class spectrum, establishing why Thatcher has chosen to tackle the drug crisis with such urgency.) Guy is a working-class Londoner whose wife supports his frustrated ambitions. He’s joined by Sophie (Charlotte Ritchie), a clerical genius with a gift for reading documents; Kate (Hayley Squires), a Northerner who wants to fight the damage drugs have inflicted on her home region; and Bailey (Aml Ameen), a son of immigrants whose adopted country is blinded by racism to his considerable ability. Having lucked into an opportunity for rewarding work and excitement, all four intend to make the most of it.

Don divides his team between heroin’s two main domestic distribution centers: Liverpool, where the decimation of dockside industrial work has turned an entire generation toward narcotics and crime, and London, where a Kurdish gang based in the Turkish neighborhood of Green Lanes imports product from Pakistan. (The second episode’s upbeat opening sequence follows an opium crop’s supply chain from harvest to processing to Turkey to the U.K.) Kate and Bailey take Liverpool, where they recruit informants and plant sources in pursuit of local kingpin Declan Carter (Tom Hughes). Guy gets sent to Green Lanes on his own, apart from a charming Greek ex-con (Gerald Kyd) who Don gets out of jail in exchange for an introduction to the Kurds.

Guy’s legend, who he speaks about in the third person like a separate entity with “his” own thoughts and feelings, is a former legitimate businessman with a chip on his shoulder post-divorce. Per Don’s instructions, however, Guy’s personality and mannerisms don’t change when he’s in character. “I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire life for this,” he tells Don. All the spy fiction clichés about losing oneself in the lie get bandied about, but Burke’s capable performance gives the sense of a man awakened rather than transformed.

In the United States, the War on Drugs is mostly remembered as a quagmire, one that fueled the social blight of mass incarceration rather than address the root cause of mass substance abuse. “Legends” is more optimistic about its characters’ accomplishments than, say, “The Wire,” and — as indicated by Coogan’s casting — has a sense of humor to match. Scenes where the agents come in from the field to snipe at one another in a makeshift office have a chemistry that would seem like a durable blueprint for future seasons if the story wasn’t finite. But “Legends” still has plenty to say about the declining fortunes of middle-class England as presided over by Thatcher, plus the meddling of career-motivated politicians in dirty work of actual law enforcement. Alex Jennings of “The Crown” plays a perfectly posh Home Secretary pressuring Don to move up his timeline for a major party conference.

Mostly, though, “Legends” takes the same evident pleasure in risk-taking and adventure as its protagonists. Guy’s long con of ingratiating himself into the Green Lanes operation makes his arc the fullest expression of the show’s namesake concept, but his colleagues do stints as property developers, German tourists and shady lawyers, adopting aliases and even going overseas as the work demands. It’s all so fun you can forget the deadly stakes of the assignment at hand — which is precisely the point.

All six episodes of “Legends” are now streaming on Netflix.