‘The Gentlemen’ – Season One – Guy Ritchie Serves Up a Bloody Good Time – Review

Guy Ritchie has always understood that crime is considerably more entertaining when conducted in a tailored suit.

With The Gentlemen, Ritchie returns to the criminal underworld he knows so well, expanding the world of his 2019 film into an eight-part Netflix series that trades London’s backstreets for sprawling country estates, aristocratic dinner parties and a very lucrative underground cannabis empire. The result is a gloriously stylish, brutally funny and endlessly quotable slice of British gangster television.

At its centre is Edward “Eddie” Horniman (Theo James), a former British Army officer who unexpectedly inherits the family estate and the title of Duke of Halstead following his father’s death. Unfortunately for Eddie, the inheritance comes with a rather significant complication: beneath the ancestral grounds sits a sprawling weed-growing operation controlled by criminal kingpin Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone).

Suddenly, the Duke has rather more to worry about than maintaining the family silver.

Aristocracy meets Organised Crime

The beauty of The Gentlemen lies in the collision between two distinctly British institutions: the aristocracy and organised crime.

Eddie initially wants nothing to do with the criminal enterprise operating beneath his family estate. His objective is simple — get out, preserve the family name and return to something resembling respectable society.
Naturally, absolutely nothing goes according to plan.

Enter Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), Bobby’s fiercely intelligent daughter and the woman responsible for keeping the family business running. Stylish, composed and every bit as dangerous as she is charming, Susie becomes Eddie’s reluctant business partner as the pair navigate a rogues’ gallery of gangsters, billionaires, conmen, boxers and assorted lunatics.

The chemistry between James and Scodelario is one of the series’ greatest strengths. Eddie and Susie are neither conventional allies nor straightforward enemies. There is an underlying tension between them — part mutual respect, part distrust, part fascination; that gives the series considerably more depth than its blood-soaked surface might initially suggest.

Peak Guy Ritchie

For better or worse, you know exactly what you’re getting with Guy Ritchie.

Rapid-fire dialogue. Elaborate criminal schemes. Characters with increasingly ridiculous nicknames. Sudden bursts of outrageous violence. Immaculately dressed villains. Double-crosses upon double-crosses.

And, naturally, a soundtrack that makes even a walk across a country estate feel like the opening sequence of a Bond film.

But where The Gentlemen really succeeds is in its confidence. Ritchie understands that the material doesn’t need to take itself seriously to have something meaningful to say about class and power.

Eddie begins the series believing that his title makes him powerful. He soon discovers that inherited privilege and genuine power are two very different things.

As the season progresses, however, Eddie begins to realise that perhaps he isn’t quite as reluctant to get his hands dirty as he initially thought.

And that’s where Theo James becomes particularly compelling.

Theo James finds his Inner Gangster

James gives Eddie an understated physicality that works beautifully against the chaos surrounding him.
He isn’t the loudest man in the room. He doesn’t need to be.

There is something quietly intimidating about Eddie’s composure, particularly as the character becomes increasingly comfortable operating within the criminal world. What begins as a reluctant descent into gangsterism gradually becomes something much more seductive.

The transformation is subtle but satisfying: the Duke stops merely trying to escape the jungle and starts learning how to rule it.

Scodelario, meanwhile, is magnificent.

Susie could easily have become a familiar gangster archetype, but Scodelario gives her enough intelligence, vulnerability and steel to make her feel like one of the show’s most fully realised characters. She understands the rules of this world because she was raised inside it — and she knows precisely when to bend them.

A Bloody, Beautiful Playground

Visually, The Gentlemen is pure Ritchie.

The country estates, Savile Row tailoring, leather interiors, vintage cars and shadowy London establishments give the series an effortlessly luxurious aesthetic. It is essentially old-money Britain being invaded by new-money criminals; and Ritchie clearly enjoys every second of the collision.

There are moments when the plotting becomes deliberately absurd and some of the supporting characters feel as though they’ve wandered in from a particularly debauched Monty Python sketch. But that’s part of the charm.

The Gentlemen isn’t attempting gritty realism. It’s attempting swagger. And swagger it has in abundance.

The Verdict: Pure Toff Guy Cool

The Gentlemen is Guy Ritchie operating in his comfort zone — but with enough fresh blood to make the formula feel revitalised.

It’s violent, vulgar, ridiculously stylish and very funny, but underneath all the guns, drugs and designer tailoring is a surprisingly compelling story about inheritance, masculinity, class and the intoxicating nature of power.

By the time Eddie and Susie reach the season finale, the question is no longer whether they can survive the criminal underworld. It’s whether they actually want to leave it.

The Gentlemen is currently streaming on Netflix.

Image: Netflix