Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen spins off from the same-titled movie and explores the same eccentric version of London’s criminal underworld, which is populated almost exclusively by broad caricatures with funny names. To help you navigate the sometimes complex shenanigans, here’s a handy recap of Season 1 detailing everything that went down in Episodes 1-8.
The Gentlemen Season 1 Recap
Episode 1, “Refined Aggression”
The obligatory introductory episode wastes no time in establishing the main players and setting off a series of unfortunate events that radically change the status quo for all of them. Soldier Eddie is summoned home by the impending death of his father, The Duke of Halstead Archibald Horatio Landrover Horniman, and immediately discovers upon his passing that he has bequeathed the entirety of Halstead Manor to him and not his older brother, Freddy.
The shocking discoveries continue for Eddie, who learns that Freddy is in debt to the tune of £8,000,000 to a Liverpudlian coke dealer named Tommy Dixon, and then that his late father had made a deal with notorious cockney gangster named Bobby Glass to allow a weed farm to operate on the property. Since Bobby is in prison, his daughter Susie is running the operation, which is one of several farms, and would like the arrangement to continue.
While Eddie tries to come up with the money, an American businessman named Stanley Johnston tries to buy Halstead Manor for way above asking price, ostensibly for architectural appreciation reasons. Eventually, Susie persuades Tommy Dixon to write off the four million quid in interest and settle for the original four million, but he wants Freddy to apologize while dancing in a chicken suit and singing a stupid song as a sweetener.
The episode ends with a thoroughly humiliated Freddy getting very high on coke and shooting Tommy in the head with a shotgun – which, you know, not a great idea.
Episode 2, “Tackle Tommy Woo Woo”
Following Tommy’s death his associate Jethro tries to flee, managing to send a text message to a man named Errol before eventually being caught. Errol works for Tommy’s brother Gospel John, a much more serious and dangerous gangster, and he begins to try and track Tommy down.
In the meantime Eddie hatches a plan to frame Jethro for Tommy’s murder and then send Jethro away to Australia to live out his life in hiding. This involves him going to Jethro’s place to retrieve his passport, where he runs into one of his associates and, after a fight, shoots him in the head. Susie’s drunken body-disposal associate, Felix, has to sort things out, but Jethro is safely put on a vessel headed for Australia.
Despite it seeming like a crisis has been averted, another swiftly emerges. Eddie wants Susie off his land, and it becomes clear in the background that he isn’t going to be able to walk away that easily. At the end of the episode we see Felix aboard the merchant vessel, implying that Jethro will be killed without Eddie’s knowledge. Eddie also learns that Johnston is a meth dealer.
Episode 3, “Where’s My Weed At?”
Jimmy, Susie’s weed-growing expert, falls for an extremely obvious ruse at the start of Episode 3 and gets an entire shipment of weed stolen after being catfished by a nice-looking woman named Gabrielle.
This leaves Susie with some explaining to do. The intended client was a Kosovan-Albanian named Toni Blair, and to make it up to him he wants Eddie and Susie to steal a Lamborghini Huracan for him.
The Lambo is in the care of a woman named Mercy, and the episode is largely framed around Eddie’s efforts to steal it, which involve Freddy and Tamsin pretending to be a Russian couple. Eddie discovers that the car’s owner is being held in the warehouse and is missing a few fingers, and subsequently that the vehicle is full of uncut cocaine, which Toni knew about.
After a bit of a kerfuffle in which Freddy is taken hostage, Eddie and Susie deliver Toni to Mercy for an exchange to take place. Mercy hacks him up with a machete to prove her point, but the others are allowed to leave.
At the end of the episode, Gabrielle calls Jimmy, and they arrange to meet for dinner the next day.
The Gentlemen | Image via Netflix
Episode 4, “An Unsympathetic Gentleman”
Susie wants to expand the business, while Eddie wants her off the Halstead estate. He agrees to try and drum up business by finding an alternate location for the weed farm, which just so happens to drop into his lap when the 8th Lord Bassington dies.
Bassington’s son, a wannabe Hollywood actor named Max, will inherit the sprawling estate, and he seems amenable to being cut it on the deal. However, he has a short term problem. A man was blackmailing his father, threatening to expose documents that prove he purchased several “salacious artifacts”. Eddie offers to sort it out.
In the process of doing so, Eddie discovers that it’s actually Max who’s being blackmailed, and he’s an avid fan of Hitler. He’s in possession of many of his artworks and, amazingly, his testicle, which he keeps in a jar of formaldehyde. Things take a violent turn, and the testicle doesn’t survive, but the property becomes available for Susie to lose.
Sabrina and Geoff, the Halstead groundskeeper, are also able to find a new site through much less violent means, using a crooked sheep farmer named Rokes who’s being investigated for fraud. Sabrina and Geoff have a very close relationship, which will matter later.
Episode 5, “I’ve Hundreds of Cousins”
In Episode 5, Susie and Eddie have a new problem. The weed generally makes its way into Europe through Zeebrugge’s port, thanks to the help of a Belgian named Florian de Groot. However, shipments keep getting seized. Susie tells Keith and Blanket to bring Florian to England for a chat to find out what’s going on.
Susie doesn’t like Florian and has Eddie sit in to provide a second opinion. He thinks Florian is trying to increase his cut by messing with the shipments.
Another distribution option emerges when the weed farm’s generators are stolen by some Irish travellers, the kids of the notorious Ward family, which is answerable to JP. When JP figures out what’s going on at the estate, Eddie and Susie think they make sense as a distribution partner. They all get very drunk at the manner and thanks to Eddie, the entire travelling community moves onto the grounds.
The arrangement does work out, though, and the Wards are able to get the weed into Europe hidden in status of the Virgin Mary. However, when a bunch of the profits go missing, Eddie accuses JP, which damages the relationship.
Susie and Eddie meet with Florian again, and this time poison him so that he’ll give up the name of his contact inside the Glass camp in exchange for the antidote. He rats out Keith, whom Eddie subsequently offers to JP to smooth things over. JP kills him, but not before he reveals to Eddie that Susie had Jethro killed behind his back.
Episode 6, “All Eventualities”
Given the revelation about Jethro, Eddie is more keen than ever to get out of the arrangement with Susie and her father. Susie claims she’ll leave just as soon as the profit they’ve made – 15 million quid – has been safely laundered, a task for her associate, Chucky.
However, Chucky catches Jack having sex with his girlfriend Stella and refuses to work with them. He also puts a hit out on Jack, which means he has to move into Halstead Manor to train for a big upcoming boxing match which is being promoted by the clearly shady Henry Collins.
Behind Susie’s back, Eddie gets Henry to launder the money instead through his accountant Thick Rick. Susie is adamant that he still uses Chucky, who gives away that Susie deliberately told him to take as long as he wanted rather than expedite the process, so Eddie loses it, beats up Chucky and his associates, and takes all the money to Henry. He confronts Susie about this, and about Jethro, and she confesses that she has no intention of ever letting him get out of the deal.
At the end of the episode, Henry reveals he has fixed Jack’s fight, and he gets badly hurt. Henry is trying to take over Susie’s operation, and this is the first step.
The Gentlemen | Image via Netflix
Episode 7, “Not Without Danger”
With Jack comatose, Susie is out for revenge and begins executing people close to Henry, which Bobby is furious about. In the meantime, Stevens asks Eddie to get a lift of the other lords whose properties are being used to house Glass weed farms. With those names, Johnston will have bargaining power.
To get the names, Eddie and Freddy go to see another lord, Tibsey, whose place has been taken over by Glass goons. He lives in a constant state of fear and represents a potential future for the Hornimans, only stiffening Eddie’s desire to get them out of the arrangement. Freddy also confesses that he told Susie in the previous episode he’d be fine with something happening to Eddie so he could take his place, and Charlotte returns to the manor heavily pregnant, causing problems for Geoff, who we learned in the previous episode is her biological father.
In his naivete, Jimmy gave Gabrielle Susie’s home address. Susie and Eddie ambush her and she confesses to having been hired by Johnston to help disrupt their operation. It was him who stole the shipment, stopped the flow of product to the continent, was pulling Keith’s strings, and was working with Henry Collins, although Jack being put into a coma wasn’t a part of the plan.
Henry eventually tries to finish the job on Jack, but Susie and Blanket are waiting for him. Henry reveals that Eddie has also been working with Johnston, so Susie tells Gospel John that it was the Horniman brothers who killed Tommy.
Episode 8, “The Gospel According to Bobby Glass”
In the finale, Susie gives the Gospel the go-ahead to take out Freddy, and after a tense sequence that almost leads to a shootout, he ends up standing down on Bobby’s instructions.
Bobby intends to retire and sell the business and asks Eddie and Susie to get him the best possible deal. In the running are Johnston, Sticky Pete, and Mercy. Eventually, Eddie decides to make his own offer, teaming up with the other lords and the Irish travellers, and also cutting Henry and finally Susie into the deal.
Eddie set everything up perfectly. The sets Johnston up for tax fraud, tricks Mercy into killing Sticky Pete, and then has Henry kill Mercy. Eddie then double-crosses Henry and takes his money, later killing him.
Bobby reveals that he never intended to retire and was just testing the resolve of Eddie and Susie. They use all the money they put together as investment capital and go into business together.
In a three-months-later epilogue, we see that Johnston is now in prison with Bobby.
You can check out a more in-depth breakdown of the finale in our ending explained article.
That was our recap of The Gentlemen Season 1 (Episodes 1-8). We’d love to know what you thought of the season overall in the comments below.
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