This six-part miniseries is a cat-andmouse recounting of the infamous Brink’s-Mat robbery of Nov. 26, 1983. At the time, when six armed men broke into the security depot near London’s Heathrow Airport and stole gold bullion worth £26M, it was the biggest robbery in history.

“It’s really about what happened next because the six robbers weren’t anticipating getting that much gold, and suddenly they had to get into the world of smelting and money laundering to get rid of that evidence,” says Hugh Bonneville, 59, who plays Brian Boyce, the head of the task force that investigated the theft.

The now-retired Chief Superintendent who headed Scotland Yard’s task force is in his 80s, and Bonneville spent a few hours with him getting insight on the Brink’s-Mat robbery. “Boyce is a trustworthy, by-the-book police officer who started off in the army,” Bonneville says. “He grew up through WWII and his father taught him right from wrong, in no uncertain terms. I think that is at the core of his being. ”

The ‘80s setting for the limited series put Bonneville in a double-breasted suit copied from one Boyce wore at the trial, and in the seat of some classic cars. “The cars are 40 years old and trying to drive them at great speed [for car chases] through South London led to a lot of burnt clutches,” he says. “There were quite a few moments when we had to stand there wafting the front of the car hoping it would calm down.”

And spoiler alert: All the robbers were prosecuted. “In the end, a number of them did time, but not all the gold was accounted for,” says Bonneville, who is joined in the limited series by Jack Lowden, Dominic Cooper, Charlotte Spencer, Tom Cullen and Emun Elliott.