The Gentlemen: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix

 

Review

The Gentlemen season two review – these geezers in tweed are irritating, stupid and extremely funny

 

Guy Ritchie’s crime caper is back with the usual hijinks, swearing and men shaking their fists. But its ridiculousness is strangely comforting – and Theo James’s beefcake Eddie is so bland that he is fascinating to observe

 

Sarah Dempster

Thu 3 Sep 2026 08.02 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/sep/02/the-gentlemen-season-two-review-guy-ritchie-theo-james-netflix

 

He lives in a house, a very big house in the country. He has pectorals the size of Bentleys and wears plus-fours so voluminous they could accommodate his fleet of gundogs and still provide room for snarling groundskeeper Geoff (“I would do anyfink for you an’ this famlee”). And yet! Edward “Eddie” Horniman, 13th Duke of Halstead (Theo James), is sad. And aggrieved. A moment’s silence, please, as this powerful hunk pontificates on the unbearable lightness of being the millionaire protagonist in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen.

 

“Four hundred years ago, this estate spread out as far as the eye could see,” he tells Geoff (Vinnie Jones) as the camera swoops over his verdant playpen, a lavish patchwork of abundant hedges and cap-doffing deer. “But it’s been diminished. Year after year. Generation after generation. First came the apologies, then came the shame, then came the contraction. I want it back, Geoff,” he growls, hexagonal jaw stiff with emotion. “I want it all back!”

 

Well, of course he does. For what is The Gentlemen if not Ritchie’s ode to the enterprising zeal of the Empire, a time when toffs like Eddie spread their buttocks across the map, and lowborn bruisers provided them with endless bleedin’ bog roll? The series is also an ode of sorts to Ritchie’s own empire, in the sense that it is a facsimile of everything else the director has ever made. Which is to say; an action caper composed primarily of fists, shouting and men made of fists shouting “faaackin’ ’ell” in tweed. Only here, the energy that fizzed through his early stuff has been replaced with a clock-watching aimlessness that suggests a wariness – if not an active fear – of the running time. Anyway, here is series two, and it is precisely as irritating, beautifully shot, overlong, extravagantly stupid and fitfully funny as its predecessor.

 

The last time we joined Eddie, he was up to his cravat in cash, having joined forces with frosty Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) to help head the cannabis operation that the latter’s crime family had been running from a bunker on the aristo’s estate. And now? He wants more. More, by Jove. First, he wants to shake off Susie and bulbous paterfamilias Bobby (Ray Winstone), the duo having held him in a debt-shaped headlock due to their having bailed out Eddie’s financially incontinent brother Freddy (Daniel Ings, who remains the best thing in this bunkum by a country mile). Second, our muscular hero wants to venture into the world of international arseholery via an Italian drug deal with “boss of bosses” Marco Moretti (Sergio Castellitto). Plus! He wants to become a hereditary peer. This will allow him to a) determine the outcome of a bill to decriminalise marijuana and b) parade around his grounds in a cape the size of Sussex.

 

Elsewhere, there is a motorcycle chase, some cobblers re a coveted Botticelli and a gloriously full-bodied turn from Hugh Bonneville as the eminently bribable Lord Hawthorne (“I am being greased!”). Meanwhile, the perpetually semi-naked Bobby continues to bark orders from between his sauna and hot tub; an effort, presumably, to become the world’s first fully amphibious cockney.

 

In the middle of all this is Theo James’s Eddie, a thick-armed enigma wrapped in a yawn. Why does his face never move? Maybe he was born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Or maybe it’s the realisation that Eddie isn’t so much a character as a wardrobe of beef in cufflinks, his main contribution to proceedings being to drawl about profit margins while blankly reducing the local partridge population to soup (“I shot another one, Geoff!”)

 

There’s a certain comfort in Ritchie’s commitment to the bit, a sense of reassurance in the knowledge that in these restless times, his fetishisation of the gentry and preoccupation with uninhibited wide-boys remains immutable. But it ain’t half slow, ma’am. For all its international hijinks, its oi-oi-saveloy geezerisms, you may still find yourself wishing the whole thing would, in the words of Bobby, “gerra faaackin’ move on”.

 

 The Gentlemen is on Netflix now

The Gentlemen Season 2 (Netflix) TV Show Review

"This journey we're on... does appear to be coming at quite the cost."

by  Casimir Harlow Sep 3, 2026 - Updated: Yesterday at 9:27 PM

https://www.avforums.com/reviews/the-gentlemen-season-2-netflix-premiere-tv-show-review.23816/

 

The Gentlemen Season 2 TV Show (2026)

Ritchie's Mobland and The Gentlemen have both proven to be surprisingly watchable TV shows, perhaps less surprisingly renewed for multiple seasons.

Whilst Mobland wove a much more conventional straight gangland crime drama - standing out mostly through tactical casting of the likes of Tom Hardy and Pierce Brosnan - his TV spin-off of the 2019 film of the same name was much more overtly 'Ritchie' in its stylisation. Bursting with colourful, larger-than-life characters, imaginative visual flourishes and madcap imagery, with jet black comedy underpinning it all, its opening season proved a thoroughly unexpected delight. And from the looks of it, they've managed to maintain the momentum.

 

The Gentlemen (Netflix) TV Show Review

by Cas Harlow · Mar 8, 2024

Somewhat insanely, Guy Ritchie's created/written/directed TV spin-off to his 2019 movie of the same name is great fun, chock full of colourful characters, bursting with witty dialogue, and utterly bingeworthy. 

Duke Eddie is settling into his empire, but looking to expand, with him and Susie establishing similar under-the-Royal-Estate operations across Europe, although almost as immediately hitting a roadblock with a volatile Italian contingent. With Eddie having to juggle these complicated dynamics, as well as the further messiness caused by his at-first-sight chemistry with an Italian Countess, and try his best to do right by an increasingly eccentric overlord in Susie's dad, incarcerated crime boss Bobby Glass, he has everything to play for, and everything to lose.

Kick-starting with a cold open revealing a beaten-to-a-pulp Eddie crawling, broken-boned, across a field in the middle of nowhere, this second season of The Gentlemen is determined to up the threat from the outset. Which is a sensible tactic really, as the complications of Eddie's rise to an 'arrangement' with Susie were pretty much concluded in the first season, leaving a follow-up in need of more of that similar vibe of organised crime obstacles and colourful, often life-threatening, chaos.

 

All that said, despite the whipsmart dialogue and electric banter, there is more of a dark cloud hanging over this season, with less room for fun and hijinks along the way - the kind of absurd intentional unintentional comedy that came from, for example, the brother's ludicrous behaviour. Season 2 wants to maintain threat, sow seeds of betrayal and future retribution (that cold open), and make life particularly unpleasantly messy for its cadre of 'Royals' and their criminal accomplices. At first, this leaves concerns over where they're going with all this - will they lose the spirit of the first in favour of the relentlessly dark tone adopted here?

Theo James continues to enjoy some of the best work of his career, really suiting the role of the Duke, whilst Kaya Scodelario also seems like she was born to be Susie Glass. More screentime for the show's biggest hard man veterans - Ray Winstone and Vinnie Jones - still leaves them vying for MVP (Vinnie comfortably winning at the moment), whilst a decent supporting cast rounds out the bunch, all of them pleasantly committed to Ritchie's at-times wild antics.

 

And wild we get, but concerns over the darker nature of the material - whilst founded - ultimately prove merely the ingredients of a richer dish this time around, one which eschews Ritchie's more trademark fun (whilst maintaining the flair) to evolve its criminal underworld to epic proportions. As the season progresses, you realise you're not simply following the ongoing adventures of this Duke in his descent into the underbelly, you're watching Ritchie weave The Godfather Part II into his sophomore effort's dynamic, as James' Duke is well and truly put through the wringer. That cold open doesn't telegraph a fated end, but merely a mid-season reset of sorts, and the final few episodes proving the best in both seasons. Not only do they turn a clash with Winstone's boss into a powerful propellant for the endgame, but they spin up a whole fabulously constructed revenge plot where everybody could be a traitor, and where the Duke himself could go completely off the rails. The penultimate episode's siege doubles down on Vinnie's MVP status, whilst the finale delivers the cathartic goods with aplomb, and although we already know there's another on the way, this one ends just perfectly. Get it watched.

"Tweedland" has reached 11.000.000 page views ! Thanks to you all ! Jeeves.

 

GANT - Seven Decades Seven Icons

 

Gant Inc., stylized as GANT, is a Swedish designer fashion brand with American roots, headquartered in Stockholm. The company was founded in 1949 by Bernard Gantmacher and was originally based in New Haven, Connecticut. Gant operates in 70 markets and its products are available at over 4,000 retailers. The company has three different collections: GANT, GANT Diamond G and GANT Rugger.

 

History

Bernard Gantmacher arrived in New York City in 1907, a Jewish immigrant of Ukrainian origin from Myropil. Gantmacher was employed at a garment factory sewing shirt collars and met his future wife, Rebecca Rose, a button and buttonhole specialist who worked for the same company. After Gantmacher's return from military service during World War I, the couple married and founded the Par-Ex Shirt Company with business partner Morris Shapiro. The company made shirts for brands including Brooks Brothers, J. Press and Manhattan.In 1927, the company was relocated to New Haven, Connecticut. In April 1949, the Gant label was launched. Following their father's death in 1955, Bernard's sons took over the company's operations.

 

GANT dress shirts were known for their back-collar button, locker loop and box pleat.[8][7] In the 1960s, Gant made the Yale co-op shirt exclusively for the store on the Yale University campus.[9] Shirts from Gant and rival Sero were de rigueur for high-school and college-age males who could afford their premium price during the decade. In 1968, the Gant brothers sold the company to Consolidated Foods but remained with the company. In 1971, the company launched its first sportswear line and in 1974 launched its Rugger brand. In 1979, Gant became a subsidiary of apparel manufacturer The Palm Beach Company and ceased operations in New Haven.

 

In the early 1980s, Gant entered the international market when Pyramid Sportswear of Sweden was given the right to design and market Gant outside the US. Initially, Pyramid only offered the Gant label in Sweden but quickly expanded internationally. In February 1995 the first Gant store opened in Europe in Amsterdam; it is currently the oldest operating Gant store in the world. In 1995, Phillips-Van Heusen acquired the Gant brand in the U.S. from bankrupt sportswear manufacturer, Crystal Brands, Inc. In 1997, Gant opened its first store in the United States. Phillips-Van Heusen sold its Gant operations in 1999 to Pyramid Sportswear of Sweden for $71 million.

 

In the spring of 2006, Gant became a public company and was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange's O-List; it was delisted 20 March 2008 upon being acquired by the Swiss retail group Maus Frères. In November 2010, Gant returned to New Haven, where it opened a retail store.

Mechanical Wonders: The Cutting-Edge Engineering of Puy du Fou | FD Engineering

PUY DU FOU 2024 || MUST SEE historical theme park in FRANCE

 

The Theme Park at the Heart of France’s Culture War

 

France dispatch

The Theme Park at the Heart of France’s Culture War

 

The Puy du Fou is one of France’s most visited theme parks. Its founder says it gives the French a “founding narrative,” but critics say it peddles “far-right propaganda.”

 

By Catherine Porter and Giulia Imbert

Visuals by William Daniels

Reporting from Puy du Fou theme park in Les Epesses, France

Sept. 9, 2026Updated 1:07 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/09/world/europe/theme-park-france-right-culture-war.html

 

In a historical theme park set among the wheat fields of rural western France, Viking boats and pianos emerge from ponds, and knights ride on horseback. Now France’s most popular theme park after Disneyland’s sites near Paris, it has opened an outpost in Spain and aims to build one in England soon.

But many in France hate the park, called the Puy du Fou.

Critics have called it a peddler of “far-right propaganda,” an accusation that has gained in resonance as ultraconservatives edge closer to power for the first time since World War II. The critics accuse it of weaponizing history to popularize the values of its founder, Philippe de Villiers, a former lawmaker who supports far-right politicians and has long campaigned against the European Union, Islam, gay marriage and immigration.

He recently wrote that the park is part of a larger “cultural battle” for the country’s soul, and that “cultural victories precede political victories.” But his son Nicolas, who has run the park since 2012, said his only ambition is “to create shows that make people love France,” adding, “For me, that is my only cultural battle.”

The park is four hours southwest of Paris by car. With thousands of trees, growing amid man-made rivers and ponds, the Puy du Fou feels more like a national park than an amusement park. There are no carnival rides and few vendors. Instead, dirt paths lead visitors to immersive sets as well as performances, mostly about French history, that unfold in large outdoor arenas and indoor theaters, and usually last around half an hour.

The map locates Les Epesses, France, southwest of Paris, and home to the Puy du Fou theme park.

50 mileS

English

Channel

Paris

A11

France

Loire

E3

Detail

area

Les Epesses/

PUY DU FOU

France

The New York Times

The draw, for most, is not just the mythic French stories, but the spectacular special effects and the animals.

In a show about the Romans, charioteers race teams of festooned horses around an Egyptian obelisk that later splits into a giant galley boat. In another show, more than 300 live birds, including vultures and bald eagles, wheel over spectators’ heads.

“The mechanical engineering is incredible,” said Arido Agrifoglio, 69, a retired doctor from Switzerland, lining up with his wife, Sylvie, for their ninth show of the day. The night before they’d watched a performance in which dancers, a pianist and a piano rose out of a pond.

“I often wonder, ‘How did they do that?’” Mr. Agrifoglio said.

Image

Actors dressed as Romans hyping the crowd before a show at Puy du Fou.

Video

The Roman-themed performance includes circus games and chariot racing.

Before the 250-acre park existed, Philippe de Villiers launched a single show in 1978 beside a ruined castle called Puy du Fou, which he has said is Old French and Latin for “hill of beech trees.”

Then a student at the country’s elite university for civil servants, Philippe de Villiers wrote the script for a performance about the region’s bloody experience during the French Revolution, when locals took up arms against the new government and were massacred. Since Philippe de Villiers couldn’t afford to pay actors or stagehands, community members volunteered. The show, called the Cinéscénie, has since expanded, and is still run by thousands of volunteers in summer.

Philippe de Villiers went on to become the country’s secretary of state for culture, and an elected lawmaker. In 1989, after a trip to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla., he saw the business potential. He created a new park next to the Cinéscénie, staffed by professionals. He set about writing the scripts for new shows that would offer the country what he called its “founding narrative.”

“We must give the French back their past,” he wrote in his 2025 book “Populicide,” which said immigration was causing civilizational collapse in France, where the book was a bestseller.

 

Today, the park has around 3,000 workers staffing in around 20 shows, five history-themed hotels and 26 restaurants. The company earned roughly $350 million in 2025 with a record-breaking three million visitors, Nicolas de Villiers said. In 2021, he opened a park in Toledo, Spain, that focuses on Spanish history, and in 2025, he applied to open a British version near Oxford. (Projects planned in Russia, Russian-occupied Crimea and the United States never came to fruition.)

Image

Nicolas de Villiers, center, the president of Puy de Fou and son of the park’s founder, speaking with technicians during a performance.

Video

La Cinéscénie was the show that inspired Puy de Fou, and is now accessed via a separate entrance.

With its mounting success, the park has come under intense criticism from left-wing politicians and historians, who have for years pointed out inaccuracies in its shows, and accused it of warping history for political reasons. That criticism was amplified in 2022, when four historians published a scathing book called “Le Puy du Faux,” or The Puy of Falsehood, that calls the park “ideological,” where visitors will “learn nothing.”

“It’s the erasure of the French Revolution and the praise of Christianity. That right there is the Puy du Fou recipe,” said Florian Besson, one of the authors and a medieval historian.

Many of the shows center on Catholicism. The marauding Vikings set on attacking a Christian village are stopped by a ghostly saint and swiftly converted. The Romans are portrayed as cruel pagan overlords who — until they, too, converted — persecuted the Christian Gauls.

“It’s a complete reversal of history: Christianity came to Gaul from Rome, yet there it is presented exactly the opposite way,” said Pauline Ducret, another historian and co-author of the book.

The park presents an “eternal France” that is under attack, Ms. Ducret said, if not by Vikings, then by a revolutionary army or Germans — an echo of Mr. de Villiers’ anti-immigration views.

Video

A scene depicting the baptism of Clovis, a king who ruled much of what would become France, after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Image

A portrait of Joan of Arc in a Renaissance-themed chateau at the park.

Then there are the choices of which parts of French history to present. There is nothing, critics point out, that touches on France’s darkest moments: slavery, colonialism, or Vichy — the government during World War II that collaborated with the Nazis.

Philippe de Villiers did not respond to interview requests. But his son Nicolas, 46, spoke to us twice, once in a room above a restaurant in the park where waiters sing French folk songs. He said that prescribing political aims to the park was “ridiculous.”

“Are Vikings right wing or left wing? Were Romans right wing or left wing?” he said. “That question is completely out of step with the shows we present.”

But he does see the park as helping to build the country’s collective memory. “If we want as a people in France to have a common destiny,” he said, “we need common memories.” And he made no apologies for omitting certain historical chapters.

“We always prefer glory against shame,” he said.

Nicolas de Villiers said he believed the recent deluge of criticism about the park was motivated by jealousy, particularly from the left-wing elite that he said controls the theater scene in Paris.

François Ruffin, a left-wing presidential candidate, offered another theory. The scrutiny, Mr. Ruffin said, rose with the fortunes of the far-right National Rally party, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, has a strong chance of winning the presidency next year.

When Philippe de Villiers built Puy du Fou, it was “a pocket of resistance, keeping the flame of neoconservatism alive,” Mr. Ruffin said in an interview. “Today they have become dominant, the majority, and potentially poised to take power next year,” Mr. Ruffin added.

The Puy du Fou is just one part of a mounting right-wing cultural constellation, he said, driven by the French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, whose holdings include publishers, film companies and a right-wing television channel, CNews, on which Philippe de Villiers has a Friday night show.

That constellation is now winning France’s “culture war,” said Mr. Ruffin.

Image

A performance featuring a viking raid on a medieval village.

Image

Visitors resting in front of reproductions of World War I propaganda posters.

He has called for the creation of a left-wing Puy du Fou that would mount shows on the French Revolution, and the French resistance during World War II.

On a recent sweltering day, families raced from one show to the next.

Some said they liked the park’s historical message. Critics only “hate it because it’s French,” said Laurent Smirnow, 53, a security guard.

But many said they had come for the entertainment, not the history lessons or the politics.

Valérie Billet, 57, took a break under a tree with her in-laws and adult children.

Her sister refused to come to the park because of Mr. de Villiers’ politics, she said.

“When I come here, I detach the park from the man who created it,” said Ms. Billet, an English teacher. Sitting nearby, her daughter Nolwenn, 28, muttered under her breath that the park’s biases were hard to ignore. “It’s something you can definitely feel,” the daughter said.

Still, she’d been back with her family four times.

Image

A carousel in a model village inspired by the Belle Époque.

Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.

 

Harry and Meghan ‘surprised’ at king’s letter reiterating they are non-working royals

 

Harry and Meghan ‘surprised’ at king’s letter reiterating they are non-working royals

 

Duke and Duchess of Sussex were apparently given little notice before message was sent to the media

 

Caroline Davies

Tue 8 Sep 2026 13.28 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/sep/08/harry-meghan-surprised-king-charles-letter-non-working-royals

 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were “surprised” at being given little notice of a formal letter sent to government departments and the military on behalf of King Charles reiterating their status as non-working royals.

Harry and Meghan, who returned to the UK from the US two weeks ago, had insufficient time to clarify any points before details were issued to the media, it is understood.

The letter, the first official public clarification of the couple’s status since their return, was issued by Buckingham Palace’s most senior officer, the lord chamberlain, Richard Benyon.

It was revealed to the media at 3.06pm on Monday. It is understood the contents were shared with Harry and Meghan’s team almost an hour before at 1.59pm, who sent a response back to Buckingham Palace at 2.19pm asking whether the guidance had already gone out, in the hope of letting the couple know before the media, and for the team to have the chance to clarify one or two points.

Harry was in a meeting and could not be contacted until 3.09pm. The Sussexes’ team received confirmation at 3.11pm it had already been sent to the media.

The letter was revealed before a reported meeting this week of the executive committee for the protection of royalty and public figures (Ravec), which is responsible for making decisions about royal security.

Harry is waiting to hear the conclusion of the risk management board’s threat assessment and Ravec is expected to decide at the meeting whether the Sussexes are entitled to taxpayer-funded security now they live in the UK. The Home Office does not comment on such decision making and would be unlikely to reveal the outcome of such a meeting.

Lord Benyon’s letter reiterates the couple’s “current” status as non-working royals. “This position, distinct from the state and royal duties undertaken by the working royal family, and with the personal latitude it brings the couple in respect of financial independence and protection of their privacy as they would wish, will continue to be fully respected.

“Their styles as His and Her Royal Highness remain in abeyance and are not used.

It says their charitable work “is a personal matter for them both and undertaken in their private capacity”.

“In short, their position is akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests.”

The letter says questions from official and state organisations about the courtesies extended to the couple, “and particularly where recourse to public funds may be required”, should be directed to Buckingham Palace, adding: “Any operational security issues should continue to be directed to the relevant police authorities.”

The couple’s children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, are expected to be starting school in the UK near to the family’s reported countryside retreat.

The palace’s clarification came on the day Harry was revealed to have visited Tower Bridge Studios, a London filming and podcast studio, where shows such as the podcasts Diary of a CEO and Jimmy Carr’s The Big Pitch are recorded.