The second series of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen is darker than the first. It’s also less funny. The only hilarious thing about it now is the rumour that the Duchess of Sussex has been in advanced discussions to join the show. Meghan to appear in an operatic drama about an aristocratic family with a warring heir and spare? Whoever came up with this stunt casting idea is a genius.
The show has been a big success for Netflix, and it’s not hard to see why. The Ritchie clichés may come thick and fast – drugs, Cockneys, gangsters, Mockneys – but series one was fun. It barrelled along with a healthy sense of the ridiculous. Series two takes up the story a year on, and there is a nastier edge. The best comic characters, coke-addled toff Freddy and space-cadet weed-cultivator Jimmy, don’t get much of a look-in, although we do get an amusing Hugh Bonneville as a bouffant-haired lord. Mostly, though, we follow Eddie Horniman (Theo James) as he gradually loses his moral compass.
A quick catch-up. Eddie inherited an estate and a dukedom following his father’s death, leapfrogging Freddy (Daniel Ings) in the line of succession. At this point, he discovered that the estate was home to a subterranean weed farm, part of an empire run by kingpin Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone) and managed by his savvy daughter Susie (Kaya Scodelario), who can more than hold her own in a macho world.
Eddie, lest we forget, began the show as a UN peacekeeper. But being a drug lord isn’t a peaceful business. As the episodes go by, the bodies start to pile up, and Eddie might actually be OK with that.
When we join Eddie and Susie, the business has expanded into Italy. If you can put a drug operation in the grounds of a stately home, you can also put one beneath the gardens of a palazzo. The Italian connection means Mafia involvement, of course. And because this is a Guy Ritchie project, there is also a Botticelli heist, a run-in with gypsies, a man-eating tiger, several fast-talking but likeable criminals, and an English country vision of tweeds and guns. A preening Italian attends a shoot on the estate and is mocked by his girlfriend with the brilliant insult: “You shoot like a vegan.” Oh, and there’s a minor character called F—sake Frank.
The second series misses Freddy’s manic energy. Luckily, we still have the absurdity of Winstone living like a king in a jail that resembles a luxury spa, and an impressively low-key performance from Vinnie Jones as the Horniman family’s loyal gamekeeper.
Love Island presenter Maya Jama pops up in episode one. Her character is a “clever girl… aspirational… she’s snagged herself a seat at the royal table”. What do you mean, that sounds like someone we know? Any similarity to actual persons living or dead is unintentional.
