‘The Gold’ Star Hugh Bonneville Talks Final Episodes, Retirement & ‘Downton Abbey’s Lasting Impact

Hugh Bonneville and his Scotland Yard cohorts are still chasing gold from that 1983 Brink’s-Mat heist. Only now it’s been turned into cash that’s being laundered around the world. In Season 2 of the Masterpiece crime drama The Gold, the Downton Abbey patriarch returns as British senior officer Brian Boyce, who, despite the odds, remains determined to track down Jack Lowden‘s Kenneth Noye, the other criminals, and the loot.

“I think it just shows you that eventually crime doesn’t pay,” Bonneville says of the series’ final six episodes. Here’s more.

You met the real Boyce before filming the first season. Did you hear from him afterward?

Hugh Bonneville: Yes. He was very gracious. He realized it was all fictionalized, but he was grateful that we got the spirit of what they were doing.

Are you anything like Boyce?

I don’t lose my temper easily. I asked him if he ever lost his temper with the team — you often see in TV shows the boss screaming at his subordinates — but he said, “No, because that’s not leadership.”

In the show, Boyce’s investigation takes him to the Spanish island of Tenerife. What was shooting at that location like?

It was quite interesting because Tenerife is well known for being quite a spicy place for certain types of tourists. Sometimes when [locals would] come up to us on set, we weren’t sure if they were coming to express interest or ask what the hell we were up to.

Your character is facing mandatory retirement this season. Fortunately, there‘s no such thing for actors. Would you ever give up acting?

For myself, I think the notion of giving up acting is like telling a painter to stop painting. It’s something that’s in you, and I’m very fortunate that I can keep going, I hope, for a bit. I can’t imagine, as they say, hanging up the codpiece.

This summer, many PBS stations reran the still-popular Downton Abbey. What’s it like to be part of that cultural sensation?

I feel enormously fond of it. It’s like a favorite sweater that I wore for many years. I’m very fond of not only the people in it, but what it’s meant to so many around the world. It’s extraordinary the number of people I encounter who tell me what it meant to them, either individually or as a family, and the nostalgia they feel watching it.

It’s really left a lasting impact.

It brought grandparents and grandchildren together on a Sunday night, and 10 years on, maybe people have watched it again, having lost one of those relatives. The TV show finished before Trump’s first term, before Brexit — some would say, perhaps, when life was a little bit kinder and a little bit rosier. I think people can watch it now with a sense of nostalgia not only for the era that it represents, but the era in which they first watched it.

The Gold, Season 2 Premiere, Sunday, October 18, 10/9c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)