Netflix’s hottest show at the moment has to be Legends. It is based on a true story (take note, Baby Reindeer — “based on”) covering how, in the early Nineties, the UK was facing a heroin crisis.

Margaret Thatcher vowed to smash the gangs (where have I heard that before?) but the reality was the UK had no funding for the operation. The only resource allocated was asking for volunteers within Customs and Excise to apply for a secret job. Steve Coogan heads up the team and oversees recruitment. Not to be wasteful, he reuses his Mick McCarthy voice from Saipan. I guess if you’ve practised a voice but it only has 90 minutes of screen time, you roll it out again.

The protagonist is a man called Guy, who goes from airport bag checker to a gritty James Bond character. He manages to convince the main drug overlords he is in the transport business and can get the biggest haul of heroin into the UK.

It’s never a paint-by-numbers show. And there is also a healthy sprinkling of humour amidst the danger. That danger comes from the duplicity of being in character, or as the show title explains: being in your Legend. The Legend is the character the agents create and inhabit when dealing with the criminal underworld.

Guy talks about his Legend’s feelings but then begins to live them. The Legend is pissed, Guy is pissed. It has I.D. style blurring of where one man ends and his Legend begins. A bit like me. Infamous for hiding behind the persona of Trevor in day-to-day life when I’m really Clive Balls. I understand Trevor’s motivations, and he would argue he tolerates mine. But a Legend, like a Trevor, is more than just good method acting. It is becoming the new identity until you can’t remember the other you as anything other than a different person.

It’s Guy’s intensity that keeps the show driving forward and creates the jeopardy.

This feels like an old school Sunday night drama you’d find on terrestrial TV. Instead, Netflix delivers the best of British to the widest audience. In doing so, it gives us its best offering in years.

9/10