Legends

7

I kind of don’t know how to write about this show. Mostly because I’m not sure how I actually feel about it. I found it confusing, but also sometimes boring and sometimes a little meandering. I know the real critics and probably most viewers might disagree with me, but it’s just not my cup of tea. That’s a British reference. Because, you know, this is a super-British series. Based on some super-British stuff that actually happened back in 1990 during the Thatcher administration. Their own little war on drugs. Though it was so small and under-the-radar that I suppose it was more of a skirmish on drugs. Or — as our asshat president might say — an excursion on drugs. Moron. I will admit that I haven’t gone and done my research on the actual campaign this is based on, but something about it feels dinky. It feels like small potatoes in the face of Mexican cartels and the professional smuggling and selling networks we have here in the U.S.

Heroin is bad. If you’ve ever seen Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, you know what I’m talking about. Oh, or The Corner. Or The Basketball Diaries. Or like a thousand other pieces of media where smack ruins peoples’ lives. Well, heroin is the bad guy in Legends. A rising issue in London and Liverpool. But one that is never really addressed by the government in a real way until the daughter of a cabinet minister in London and a white kid in Liverpool overdose. Because this is how things work. Especially with Thatcher, who was very Reaganesque and pretty hated by anyone who wasn’t a conservative douchenozzle. At least that’s my take away from random liberal Brits I’ve heard talking over the years. Anyhow, she saw an opportunity to bolster her image as it started to sag by waging her own war on drugs. Because, you know, it was such a popular policy in the U.S. and was working wonders at the time under Reagan. Hint: it wasn’t. And with these two high-profile deaths, it was the perfect chance to set up a big, public bust and hopefully claw back some popularity with her constituency. I don’t think I’m being cynical here: this was a purely political — and, of course, vaguely racist — endeavor. Which was, at least in my head, lingering in the background of all their subsequent activities.

The issue with Thatcher’s plan was that there was no money for this program. And no personnel. So her Home Secretary has to cobble something together with his Customs service to put together a squad. Customs being the people who check bags at the airport and check boats at harbors and whatnot. At least that’s my understanding. I think they’re mostly there to catch people trying to smuggle contraband in their luggage to avoid VAT and probably some tax avoidance swindles at the docks. Hardly the swashbuckling badass undercover officers they need to infiltrate the heroin trade coming in from Pakistan. In order to recruit for this crew, they call in a bunch of Customs people to test them in different ways to see who might fit the profile for an agent for a secret mission. They whittle it down to four agents. None of whom have any real experience for this kind of job. Though we see in their training that they each have some proficiency in one or more things needed for the roles. Mainly Tom Burke (Guy) just looks like a dude who wears leather jackets and might be willing to do illegal shit. The other three have way less involved roles, as it’s Guy who has to go undercover to infiltrate the Turkish network and pretend to be a crooked importer / exporter. Or something.

The issue for me is that we now literally have four people out there trying to disrupt the heroin trade into England. It’s almost silly. Even if it did sorta actually happen, I don’t think it happened the way it’s portrayed, though. Other than Guy you have these two noobs who sit in a car in Liverpool in broad daylight observing drug buys and teenagers on bikes and stuff. These two couldn’t seemingly disrupt a kid’s t-ball game let alone an international drug smuggling ring. The fourth woman sits back at their makeshift, stereotypical drippy warehouse headquarters feeding info and data to the agents in the field. All while Steve Coogan’s character — who clearly has PTSD from working as one of these “legends” like Guy in his past — kind of hands out aphorisms and generally goes around trying to keep the project running. The thing is, we’re supposed to feel this tension that any and all of these four characters could be in mortal danger. That they are laying their lives on the line for love of country. But the show’s creators never really give us many reasons to feel like they are on the edge of being found out and killed. Sure Guy has some close calls when his ad-libbing goes a little wobbly, but the woman at HQ is never in real danger, and the two in the car seem to be able to just sit there day after day in shady neighborhoods without so much as a second look. And they would definitely stick out given their racial makeup and the fact they’re just sitting there in a nondescript car dressed like an undercover cop would dress with binoculars in plain sight. But, no, nothing ever really feels that dangerous for at least three of the four of them. The menace isn’t there.

Even the bad guys — especially the Declan Carter (Tom Hughes) drug kingpin dummy in Liverpool — just felt not that bad. Sure dude had a person or two killed, but even his fellow drug dealer dude basically made fun of him for being a former weed-slinging club doorman. Plus, he dresses like low-rent Steve Jobs, which is just not that cool or intimidating. Even the arch bad guy, Hakan (Numan Acar), feels like he’s a secondary Marvel character. Again, his organization feels dinky and insular in a way that makes the story itself feel small. The whole thing has a Donnie Brasco vibe about it — but only in my head. Granted, two tonnes (which is apparently different than “tons”) of heroin is a lot of smack. An amount that we visually see move around in the film, and in itself looks way smaller than I’d expect 4,000 pounds of drugs to look. Especially when they manage to stick all of it in the bed of a relatively small pickup truck. It too diminished the impact for me. Maybe this is the difference between British sensibilities and American ones. If this was a based-on-a-real-story in America, there would be a lot more close calls. A lot more soaring heroism. Much easier accents to unscramble. Seriously, you’ll need captions on, especially for the scenes in Liverpool. But, seeing as it is an English tale, things are much more low-key. There are a few verging-on-cheesy monologues from characters where the writers were clearly in their bag, but overall there is just a lot of throat-clearing and scenes in drab warehouses or cars with characters talking in thick accents. It’s a cool story, but for me it was way too slow and handled in a way that managed to make what should be an up-and-down tale too one-note.