Hot Picks: Gold: A Journey With Idris Elba

From Ghana, the world’s largest gold producer, to the gold reserve stored under the Bank of England, this feature documentary takes viewers on an expansive journey to detail the many ways the precious metal has shaped society and cultures across the world.

Fronted by actor Idris Elba, the film explores how essential gold has become to human existence; how embedded it is in our history, politics, art, economy, and even our healthcare and communications.

In the process of learning how the metal’s discovery – and the trading of it – has shaped our world, Elba visits the Ashanti King in Ghana, descends to one of the deepest gold mines in the world and is given access to the Bank of England’s gold reserves.

“Gold is the basis of economies, but it’s also been in art, jewellery and in nearly every transaction for millennia, and even now it’s in everything from mobile phones to cars,” says Passion Distribution director of sales and co-production Nick Tanner. “Our life as it is right now wouldn’t be possible without gold – it really is intrinsic to the human experience.”

He says Elba was the “first choice” to star in the documentary, not just because of his profile – which lends the doc an extra layer of international appeal – but because gold is personally important to him. Elba approaches the topic from the view of the everyman: someone who buys and wears gold regularly and is curious as to why it has gained such prominence across cultures and societies all over the globe.

The presence of an A-lister is not the doc’s only trump card, according to Tanner. While he acknowledges that the topic of gold has been the subject of TV docs before, Pioneer’s film – he contends – goes deeper.

“The absolute unified scope of the subject matter is the programme’s main USP,” he says. “This is a topic that hasn’t been dealt with in as much detail, while telling the bigger picture at the same time.

“It shows [everything from] the process of extracting gold from the ground to its cultural resonance. For example, Idris can be talking about the importance of gold to the world of hip-hop one minute and the next he is in the basement of the Bank of England, surrounded by billions of pounds worth of gold, which props up not just the UK economy, but also is the central reserve for other countries.

“The talent, access and scale of the story is what marks it out from other specialist factual documentaries of this nature.”

The doc is already piquing buyers’ interest, with an as-yet-unnamed streamer snapping it up for the UK, and Tanner is optimistic that the universality of the subject matter will make it a tempting prospect for acquisitions execs across the world.

While Passion is in the early stages of the documentary’s international rollout, feedback from the market so far has been positive.

He says: “This story has a ubiquity to it, and the quality of the documentary and the talent should be of interest to every kind of platform and to really varied audiences around the world.”