Guy Ritchie's new TV series "The Gentlemen" doesn't really have much to do with his 2020 film "The Gentlemen," except it reuses the same premise of a criminal enterprise based on growing marijuana on the estates of aristocrats who are short on funds. None of the characters or actors cross over that I'm aware of, so this is really a reboot rather than a spinoff.
Eddie Horniman (Theo James), is the younger son of the Duke of Halstead (Edward Fox), who dies suddenly and leaves everything to Eddie - the estate, the titles, and everything else of value - instead of his dissolute older brother Freddy (Daniel Ings). Eddie soon discovers the marijuana operations on the estate, being run by Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), the daughter of mobster Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone). Eddie wants out of the marijuana business, but his brother has gambling debts that have come due, a shady American named Stanley Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito) is very eager to buy the estate, and plenty of other problems crop up.
Ritchie directed and co-wrote the first two episodes, and you could simply treat them as a stand-alone movie. The other six episodes feel slightly disconnected from the initial installments and lose some momentum. However, it's a pretty good watch the whole way through, as Eddie gets pulled further and further into criminal activity and discovers he has a knack for it. The supporting cast includes Joely Richardson and Vinnie Jones, while several other familiar faces show up in guest roles. Michael Vu as the genial Vietnamese weed grower Jimmy stole every scene he was in, but the main event here is Theo James and Kaya Scodelario. I've been watching these two in so many mediocre genre films over the past decade that it was a great surprise to discover that both of them are actually quite good actors. They have chemistry together, even.
And this is important because "The Gentlemen" is not the action series that I was expecting it would be. People are graphically killed onscreen, but it happens far less often than you'd think, considering all the guns being waved around. Most of the time "The Gentlemen" is a flashy crime series with a comedic bent. It's far more "Breaking Bad" than "Reacher," full of schemes and capers and threats of carnage without too much carnage actually happening. And it's all executed with enough style and energy that I didn't mind much. Ritchie has dependably been turning out entertaining films in this genre for decades now, and "The Gentlemen" is no exception. It's not as dark or as gritty or as funny as the most famous titles, but there is an impressive amount of swearing and drug use and ridiculously verbose people threatening each other. For a Netflix series, I'm very satisfied with the results.
For those hoping for something a little more substantive, I'm afraid there's not much. Any class commentary is pretty shallow, and mostly over and done with after the initial episodes. Eddie learns how little money he's actually able to get his hands on in a hurry to help Freddy. Meanwhile Freddy, predictably, goes off his rocker when his privilege is threatened and behaves exactly how you'd imagine a cocaine-fueled rich brat would behave. Oddly, the brothers don't interact much as the series goes on, so we don't get much family drama either. There's certainly the potential for future complications, but the Horniman family secrets stay on the sidelines. Romance doesn't really come up between Eddie and Susie either, which I wouldn't have minded, but it's not that kind of show.
Finally, I want to note that watching the series requires more attention than I'm used to. Maybe it's the heavily accented dialogue and maybe it has something to do with the pacing or sound design, but I found myself missing the endings of episodes on more than one occasion. Scenes would just end abruptly, and I'd find myself staring at the credits before I knew it. This didn't have a big impact on my enjoyment of "The Gentlemen," but I figured it was worth mentioning.
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