How Steve Coogan's Legends Brought Back The 90s | BAFTA Behind The Scenes

Overview

This BAFTA behind-the-scenes feature explores how Legends—a 90s-set true-story thriller—is brought to life. It focuses on the real-life customs operation that helped bring down a major heroin supplier in the UK.

A central point repeated throughout the piece is that the undercover people were not elite police or intelligence, but ordinary customs workers with “amateur” backgrounds. The show’s core appeal, multiple speakers note, is that it turns those everyday roles into something extraordinary and dangerous.

Main Plot Context (As Discussed)

• The series is based on true events from the 1990s.
• It centers on an undercover customs operation to dismantle a high-profile heroin figure brought into the UK.
• A key storytelling contrast is between:
  • the mundane desk-job/processing life, and
  • the chaos of going undercover.

This creates a tone that feels both tense and believable.

The creators/writers also emphasize that they still had to “clean up” messy real life into a coherent, engaging narrative that works as TV across multiple hours.

Standout Scenes and On-Set Moments

• The team shoots a home dinner/supper scene using Milan Actis’s house to keep “Guy” protected from what’s happening outside.
• The scene introduces Zara for the first time, described as a fun, important beat in the story.
• Milan Actis is framed as a “wild card,” while Guy faces the ongoing anarchy and volatility around him—helping establish a recurring sense of tension and unpredictability.

Acting, Writing, and Character Work

• A performer explains they were excited to give voice to lesser-known real people, especially a woman character described as “badass” and “whole,” rather than written as a cliché.
• Casting is described as “80% of the director’s job,” with actors bringing the spirit of the character through lived experience.
• Dialogue shaping includes:
  • Manchester / straight-talking Northern colloquialisms
  • praise for the writer’s precision—“it’s this word and no other”—so the language feels deliberate and exact.

Craft: Recreating the 90s “For Real”

The feature spends significant time on production design, including the approach of building sets and then intentionally “messing them up” so they look lived-in—starting spotless and becoming distressed by the end of the scene.

Key details include:

• Small layers and realistic props—not just big visuals.
• Mixing period references and textures (including Afghan and Greek details).
• Props and period accuracy receive special attention:
  • 90s paraphernalia used to sell the era (including tablet-like drugs and “wraps” designed to resemble how substances were hidden).
  • Practical notes on staging drug-deal moments, such as using materials like cling film to make items look convincingly larger.
  • Everyday nostalgia used as set dressing—e.g., Woolworths and Weetabix—to reinforce how thoroughly the period is recreated.

Filming Logistics

Recreating the 90s in central London requires controlling the environment:

• locking off areas,
• preventing modern cars/people from ruining shots, and
• in some cases, effectively needing to “move an entire town” to match locations within a single day.

Tone and “Humor in Danger”

Multiple contributors stress that the show isn’t a comedy, but it contains:

• gallows humor, and
• moments of whimsy.

When asked if it’s funny, the implied answer is no—the humor instead emerges from who the characters are and the pressure they’re under.

Overall Takeaway

Legends succeeds by blending:

• a nail-biting true-story thriller premise,
• character-driven performances (including newly introduced figures like Zara),
• and a deeply detailed, hands-on recreation of the 1990s—from props and dialogue rhythms to the way locations must be controlled to look period-correct.

Personalities Mentioned

• Steve Coogan
• Gerald Kyd
• Neil Forsyth (writer)
• Sadiq (referenced in props/construction context)
• Milan Actis (character; played by someone not named in the subtitles)
• James (referenced in production/design context)
• Falie (referenced in production/design context)
• Zara (character; actor not clearly identified in subtitles)