‘The Gold’ Season 2 Returns to the Great Ingot Hunt
'The Gold' Season 2 will explore what happened to the other half of the £26m in gold bars stolen as part of the Brink’s-Mat robbery.
The 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery is famous for the bounty stolen and never recovered, but that doesn’t mean people actually know what happened, either to those who committed it or with the botched investigation that followed.
The broad outlines are pretty easy to find: A “crime of the century,” when it occurred in the early 1980s, involved six robbers who broke into the Brink’s-Mat security warehouse near London’s Heathrow Airport with a plan to steal £3.2 million in Spanish pesos. The recession of the 1970s/80s created something of a semi-permanent criminal class, for whom this type of money laundering was a way of life: They would take the money across the Channel in batches and exchange it for francs, then bring it back and convert it to English pounds. At the time, the exchange rate would have let the robbers walk away with ~£1 million, split six ways; it was enough to live on for several months before doing it all over again.
Instead, the sextet found a stash of gold bullion, diamonds, and cash worth around £26m. This was, not surprisingly, the largest robbery in world history at the time. Season 1 focused on the gold that wound up being laundered by creating Chelsea Pier, one of the toniest neighborhoods in London today. But apparently that was only ~£13m of it. So what happened to the other half?
“[Season 2] follows the second half of the Brink’s-Mat gold, and it’s also a story of the consequences faced by several of our key characters across the entire show,” Forsyth told the BBC when it debuted in 2025. “I always saw The Gold as a two-series show, following the two halves of the gold, so this will be the final series.”
Here’s the second season synopsis:
Following the conviction of some of those involved in the theft and handling of the Brink’s-Mat gold, the police realized that those criminals only ever had half of it. Season 2 explores what happened to the other half and the criminal fortune it created. As the police investigation continues, it becomes a tense, high-stakes journey into international money laundering and organised crime, the police embark on a series of dramatic manhunts as they desperately try to solve the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Metropolitan Police.
Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), Charlotte Spencer (Sanditon), and Emun Elliott (Guilt) all reprise their roles from Season 1, alongside Peter Davison (Doctor Who), Amanda Drew (Inspector Ellis), Silas Carson (Out There), Tom Cullen (Becoming Elizabeth), Stefanie Martini (Prime Suspect: Tennison), and Sam Spruell (The Thing with Feathers).
(Masterpiece)
Season 2 also introduces several new faces to the roster, including Stephen Campbell Moore (Criminal Record), Tom Hughes (Victoria), Rochelle Neil (Three Little Birds), Joshua McGuire (Blitz), Joshua Samuels (Saltburn), Tamsin Topolski (Call the Midwife), Antonia Desplat (The Durrells in Corfu), Lorna Brown (Press), Thomas Coombes (Miss Austen), Sean Teale (Mr Selfridge), and Olivia Grant (Indian Summers).
Series creator Neil Forsyth (Guilt) once again wrote all six episodes of The Gold Season 2, with a new director, Patrick Harkins (Tin Star), helming all installments and Charlie Leech returning as producer. Forsyth is also an executive producer along with Ben Farrell for Tannadice Pictures and Nick Lambon and Lindsay Salt for BBC Drama; the series is produced with All3Media International.
The Gold Season 2 will premiere on Sunday, October 18, 2026, at 10 p.m. ET on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Channel. All episodes will be available to binge on PBS Passport for members on premiere day.
All episodes of Season 1 are available to stream on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.
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