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You know when you’re watching a Guy Ritchie thriller. There’s a style and some core tropes that the writer/director employs time and again, often to great effect: the messy mish-mash of larger-than-life characters; the combination of crime and black comedy; the scowly presence of Vinnie Jones.
In the case of Ritchie’s best-known works like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, these elements combine to make something truly memorable and entertaining. In the case of The Gentlemen — an eight-episode Netflix series spun off from Ritchie’s movie of the same name — they don’t quite add up. It’s the same ingredients, but a different meal. The taste falls a bit flat.
What’s The Gentlemen about?
On returning to his sprawling rural manor to see his dying father, Eddie Halstead (Theo James) learns a disconcerting fact. His dad’s actually in business with criminals, and is hosting a rather large underground weed farm on his land. When Eddie’s promoted to the title of duke and sole inheritor after his father’s death (much to the rage of his older brother Freddy (Daniel Ings)), he’s faced with a difficult choice: work alongside crime boss Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) or try to make a clean break.
To complicate things, a mysterious billionaire (Giancarlo Esposito) is pushing to buy the Halstead’s land, Glass’ imprisoned father Bobby (Ray Winstone) wants Eddie to more work closely with his daughter, and Freddy has a large debt with a Liverpudlian drug empire led by a bearded preacher known as The Gospel (Pearce Quigley).
Cue some very Guy Ritchie-style surprise deaths and a chaotic chain of events that throws Eddie further and further into the deep end.
Credit: Netflix
The Gentlemen could have been two episodes shorter.
Sounds like a fun plot, doesn’t it? The thing is — for the first two episodes at least — it is. Cool-headed army captain-turned-duke Eddie (played with a grim stiff-upper-lip assertiveness by The White Lotus star James) is fun to watch as he struggles to come to terms with the criminal underworld, while his brother (an amusingly twitchy and wide-eyed Ings) excels at becoming more and more of a liability. There’s an entertaining inevitability to things going wrong, and a quickly ratcheting tension when they do.
But then as quickly as the action starts, it all just sort of…tails out. The pace and energy evaporates. After a strong opening, episodes three, four and five feel like filler, individual chapters that add little to the main story and make the series feel more like an anthology than a linear narrative. There are also some character choices that don’t really make sense at this point — why would Eddie, who clearly wants to separate his family from the criminality they’ve been embroiled in, so readily agree to steal a car for the Glasses in episode 3, for instance? An explanation is offered, but it seems more like an excuse to add some side quests to the main story.
Fortunately the show does pull things back further down the line. But I was still left with the feeling that the series could have been cut down to six episodes instead of eight. By the time the core thread has been picked up again the momentum is largely gone.
Credit: Netflix
Is The Gentlemen worth watching?
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like too. Fans of Ritchie will be familiar with the amusingly choppy style, and the over-the-top characters are fleshed out with strong performances across the board. The script is often amusing, often tense. It’s fun to watch the UK’s upper classes colliding with its criminal underbelly.
But The Gentlemen started off as a movie, and maybe that’s where it should have stayed. Spinning the concept of weed farms below country mansions into a longer-form story sounds promising, but the material ends up feeling stretched. There’s not enough story to pack out eight episodes, and what we’re left with is a plot that starts to feel increasingly silly (and not in a good way) before fizzling out at the end.
Like many of its suave and suited characters, The Gentlemen is ultimately style over substance.
How to watch: The Gentlemen is streaming on Netflix from March 7.
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A review of “The Gentlemen”, Guy Ritchie’s new Netflix TV series starring Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Ings, Giancarlo Esposito, and Ray Winstone.
