Summary
The Gentlemen is exactly what you’d expect from a TV spin-off to The Gentlemen – nothing more and nothing less.
There is no such thing as objectivity in criticism, nor should there be, since the world would be a very boring place if we all pretended to be fair and reasonable. Everyone has their biases, and I must admit that, for me, Guy Ritchie’s work is one of them. I like it. I like the rhythm of it, how everyone talks like a Grime artist had a baby with a philosopher. I like the editing, the eccentricity, the broad archetypal underworld caricatures, and the soundtracks. And thus, I like The Gentlemen on Netflix, Season 1 of which spins off from the same-titled 2019 film starring Matthew McConaughey and Hugh Grant, among others.
Part of the reason why I like The Gentlemen is because it’s very much the quintessential Guy Ritchie product, which is precisely the reason why many others won’t like it half as much as I did.
The Gentlemen Season 1 Review: Imagine the film, but longer
This is the first time Ritchie has ventured into serialized TV storytelling – he co-wrote all the episodes and directed the first two – and he rises to the challenge by making one of his regular movies, but eight episodes long. That’s an extremely accurate description of The Gentlemen. It’s everything you’d expect, but enough of it to fill eight hours instead of 90 minutes. Helpfully, you can also watch it without having seen the film, since the connections are very loose. This is perhaps why it has the exact same title.
Plot-wise, it’s another increasingly bizarre crime caper. Things are kick-started when former soldier Eddie (Theo James) inherits the 500-year-old country estate of his father, who kicks both the bucket and the hornet’s nest by overlooking Eddie’s older brother, Freddy (Daniel Ings), in the inheritance. It becomes clear very quickly why he would do this since Freddy is addicted to gambling and cocaine and is in debt to the tune of £8,000,000 to Liverpudlian gangsters Tommy Dixon (Peter Serafinowicz) and his older, more pious brother Gospel John (Pearce Quigley).
There’s also a lot more responsibility in stewardship of the manor and its grounds than anyone initially realized since it’s hiding an underground Cockney weed empire. Eddie’s father, Archibald Horatio Landrover Horniman – yes, I know – had previously made an arrangement with Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone) to lease the land in exchange for a cut of the profits, and Bobby’s daughter Susie (Kaya Scodelario), who is managing the operation while her dad is in prison, is hoping that arrangement can continue. She offers to help out in clearing Freddy’s debts and, well, one thing leads to another.
This is a lot of characters and a lot of stuff going on, and it represents only the tip of the iceberg. Luckily eight episodes affords Ritchie plenty of time and space for a great deal of dialogue to explain it, which he clearly relishes. You could argue it’s too much, but the exposition in The Gentlemen is often a pleasure in itself, sometimes embellished by hand-scribbled crib notes just because. It’s a totally unnecessary flourish, but so is calling a duke “Landrover Horniman” and giving his sons rhyming names.
Other self-indulgent Ritchie-isms are present and correct, from heaps of exaggerated violence to slow-motion set-pieces. There are twists and turns, deaths both unexpected and eagerly anticipated, and a menagerie of colorful characters who stroll in and out of the plot at a moment’s notice. That plot swells, shrinks, and swells again, revealing new subplots here and there as little connections are uncovered and consequences unfurl. It’s a lovely, safe-feeling exercise in playing the same hits knowing the crowd wants to hear them.
The Gentlemen Provides Exactly What You Expect It To
But what else? This, I think, is the problem, since there isn’t anything else. It’s business as usual. For me, who likes the hits, that’s no problem, even if can become slightly wearing during the draggier episodes. But for anyone not totally sold on Ritchie’s very particular brand of storytelling, The Gentlemen won’t cut it. There’s nothing about it that successfully differentiates it from, well, The Gentlemen. It’d be as easy as to say that if you liked that movie – which many of us did – then you’ll like this series, which is really just more of that movie.
The more interesting question to ask is perhaps whether The Gentlemen needed to be anything more than it is – and I don’t think it did. There’s a comforting feeling to knowing what you’re going to get and getting precisely that, delivered with enthusiasm and panache by a master of exactly one style – his own.
What did you think of The Gentlemen Season 1? Comment below.
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