The second season of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen takes place about a year after the events of the first season, and it’s pretty much a new story, with a few links back to what went on previously. It maintains its funny vibe and how centered it is around its three main characters.
THE GENTLEMEN SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: In a field, we see a man lying face down in the dirt. He comes to, and we see it’s Eddie Horniman (Theo James). He drags himself along the ground and sees a note that says “FOLLOW THE X.”
The Gist: Three months earlier, Eddie and his partner in illegal weed production, Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), have expanded the business of Susie’s father, Bobby (Ray Winstone), while Bobby is in “prison” for tax evasion. They have established production sites under massive estates all over Europe, and some of their business partners are coming to Eddie’s estate for a waterfowl shoot.
One of them is Cico Maldini (Michele Morrone), their Italian “fixer,” whom they don’t find very reliable. After a shoot where he gets beaned by a dying duck, Cico tells Eddie and Susie that Marco Moretti (Sergio Castellitto), a top Mafia boss, is sniffing around their Italian operation and wants the Brits to bid on a Botticelli and give it to him in order to pay him off. In the meantime, Eddie is courting a cash-strapped aristocrat, Lord Hawthorne (Hugh Bonneville), in order to get his support to join the House of Lords and kill a weed legalization bill. Hawthorne seems to take a shine to Susie’s brother Jack (Harry Goodwins) and wants him to be part of the deal.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Gentlemen has the same fast-paced, humor-filled feel as other Guy Ritchie shows, like Young Sherlock.
Our Take: It’s not hard for new viewers to dive into Season 2 of The Gentlemen, and what they’ll find is a good balance of funny moments — some of which consist of graphics that are scribbled during the scene — and the juxtaposition of British aristocracy to the criminal operation Eddie runs from his estate.
It’ll be fun to watch Eddie and Susie expand the empire while trying to figure out if Bobby, who seems to be making decisions based on interactions with the Bannik, a spirit only he can see, is going off the deep end. Between that, the growing operation and Eddie’s desire to go into politics for purely business-related reasons, we’re in for an eventful season. But what we like about the show is that, because it’s still centered around Eddie, Susie, and Bobby, the characters buzzing around the margins don’t muddy the waters when it comes to storytelling.
Performance Worth Watching: The chemistry between Scodelario and James is excellent, especially because Susie and Eddie are bantering as business partners, not romantic ones.
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode, but there might be some during the season.
Parting Shot: As we pan back from the lakefront cabin where Bobby is serving his sentence (!), we see scratches on his back, a sign that the Bannik thinks that working with Moretti is a bad idea.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Gentlemen continues to be a funny, fast-paced crime drama that has the best of what Ritchie can bring to a project and not a lot of the indulgences that make us roll our eyes.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.