Boxed with John Fardy: Legends

41.54 - 50.555 John Fardy

You told me I'd made it to your bed the last time we spoke about this. Steady on, Gavna! So anyway, what does the title mean, Legends?

50.575 - 73.187 Pat Kenny

So Legend is a thing, it's kind of a spying term. And we've seen it before, although it's not called this. It's the idea that you take on a character to go undercover. So what we have, this is based in reality of sorts. In the late 80s, 90s, there was a heroin epidemic in all sorts of places, but there was one in England as well. And it started to make, after a few high profile deaths,

73.167 - 99.004 Pat Kenny

Margaret Thatcher, it was on her radar. So customs officers were led to believe became the vanguard of the fight. And in the Netflix series Legends, we have a brilliant Steve Coogan playing a kind of guy, middle manager guy in the customs office who it's decided is going to recruit some disaffected customs officers. Bored. Yeah, who may be able to give more.

99.124 - 124.707 Pat Kenny

One in particular is working checking suitcases in the airport. We have the quintessential person who's just in an office writing God knows what. And within 15 minutes, he's recruited four disaffected customs employees who might want to do more with their career. And we have a flavour of this very first recruitment meeting, which would not go down now in HR circles. Have a listen to this.

125.058 - 145.867 Angus Blake

For anyone who doesn't know me, I am Angus Blake, Director of Investigations for Her Majesty's Customs. This is my head of operations, Don Clark. Right. We're holding a three-week, top-secret training program for new recruits, and are looking throughout the agency for those who we think might offer us what we need to attempt something we've never done before. What's the investigation?

177.488 - 179.512 John Fardy

Any impertinence will not be tolerated.

179.552 - 200.806 Pat Kenny

Definitely not. So no questions. But what I really liked about this is that was 15 minutes into the opening episode. So there is no long setting up all this. It begins very dramatically with two pretty horrific deaths. One in Oxford or Cambridge, I think it is actually, and one on the mean streets of at that time, of Liverpool.

201.167 - 215.07 Pat Kenny

And you see that this heroin epidemic was starting to make headlines in the tabloids and we're led to believe that Thatcher at the time read the tabloids every morning. And when this occurred a few times, she suddenly wanted... She was also in trouble for her economic policies.

263.264 - 287.465 Pat Kenny

in this group one day alone by himself at lunchtime and thinks, he's my man. So he's sent to London, where a lot is going on, and he's told the legend he's giving is that he's this importer-exporter kind of guy. We're not too sure about his marital background, In real life, he's happily married to a cop and has children. But this is the backstory he's given.

287.766 - 306.334 Pat Kenny

And he's sent to a pretty dangerous Turkish environment where it's obvious that a lot of the drugs coming in, and this seems to be legit based on records at the time, were through a Turkish connection. But they're also coming from the Far East. And he ingratiates himself to this Greek guy who he sent to prison.

306.354 - 307.075 John Fardy

Brilliantly played.

307.055 - 323.106 Pat Kenny

brilliantly played to get out of. And then he has to do a lot of undercover stuff. He has to go to a casino one night and basically get the SH-1T kicked out of him. It's done very well. And there are three other characters. One, as I mentioned, is this pencil pusher who's just...

323.086 - 340.791 Pat Kenny

sequestered to an office but has a very good eye for detail and is able to cop what's going on with supply chains and then we have this man and woman who are going to be sent to Liverpool and again they're given these interesting backgrounds as the show goes on I thought this was great

457.515 - 468.231 Pat Kenny

Thank you very much for joining us.