Kenneth Noye, the notorious criminal convicted of M25 road rage murder, will be given a sympathetic hearing in a new BBC drama.
The actor who portrays Noye in The Gold, which starts on BBC One this month, joked that he was playing him as a real “Del Boy”.
The Gold is a depiction of the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery and Noye’s leading role in the hedging of £26 million of gold bullion.
He sees crime as a study of social mobility, with Noye and others feeling a sense of injustice that the rich stay rich while the working class struggles.
“That’s how England is,” he tells his wife in the play. “A lot of people have it, we take advantage of it.”
He says later: “I want to do everything right like the other side of this country does right. People who come from money, they don’t think much about what is wrong or right when they want to make more of it.”
Noye was played by Scottish actor Jack Lowden, who adopted a South-Eastern accent for the role and joked about his efforts: “I grew up watching Only Fools and Horses, so basically I’m trying to be taller, floppier, hairy Del. Boy.”
Two years after the Brink’s-Mat robbery, Noye assaulted a Scotland Yard detective on his home grounds. He was charged with murder but a jury allowed him to act in self-defence.
In 1986, he was sentenced to 14 years for his role in the Brink’s-Mat crime spree and shouted at the jury: “I hope you die of cancer.”
Then, in 1996, he stabbed 21-year-old Stephen Cameron to death in a rampage on the M25 in Kent. He was imprisoned for murder and released in 2019.
Gold is also sympathetic to John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer, who melted down the gold and was later imprisoned for fraud. Neil Forsyth, the writer of the play, said that the story of Brink’s-Mat is not a simple tale of villainy.
“Social mobility is an interesting aspect, because it was obviously a theme of the time in the 1980s. I think we will examine that,” Mr Forsyth said.
“We’re trying to get away from a black-and-white reading of it. No one in the show is a criminal living in a world ruled by crime. They have families and lives.
“Crime is a tool they try to use to achieve something,” he said.
Hugh Bonneville plays Brian Boyce, the senior Scotland Yard detective in charge of the case. Charlotte Spencer plays a fictional female detective on the Flying Squad.
The opening moments of the play depict the robbery, with a terrified guard being doused with petrol.
Ms Spencer said: “You have to have a lot of steam to go up and rob a bank. It doesn’t happen anymore – if someone steals money, it’s done on the internet now.
“In a way, it’s like a slightly modern western. They were the last bank robbers. I’m like that.”