The battle to save the dying heart of rural France: the village bistro

 

The Sunday read France

The battle to save the dying heart of rural France: the village bistro

Kim Willsher in Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne

‘People seem really happy it’s open again.’ The Au Bon Accueil restaurant in Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian

Once central to rural life, cafe-bistros are closing in the face of depopulation and falling alcohol consumption, but campaigners are seeking new ways forward

Sun 13 Sep 2026 05.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/13/france-disappearing-bistros-rural-french-village

 

It is just past noon on a midweek day, and already every table at Au Bon Acceuil cafe-bistro in the northern Burgundy village of Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne is taken.

The three-course lunch menu today – including a choice of a hefty chunk of steak with chips or a meaty lasagne – is just €18, but villagers are not only here for the food.

After an eight-month closure, the bistro, previously called Café de la Gare, recently reopened – and locals want it to stay that way.

“It’s so important to have a cafe-bistro in a village like this. We couldn’t let it stay closed,” said Nadia Letellier, the new manager. “And we’re doing well, as you can see. People seem really happy it’s open again.”

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Nadine Letellier, the new manager of the Au Bon Accueil restaurant in Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian

Hervé Chapuis, a farmer and the village mayor, is part of the local council team that saved Saint-Martin’s last public-facing business since the boulangerie across the road closed eight years ago.

“People come here every morning to have a coffee and a chat,” he said. “Our aim is to keep this kind of business open to support the social fabric. It’s part of village life and people missed it. Now, village life has returned to its proper rhythm.”

France’s celebrated cafe-bistros are in trouble. In 1900 there were an estimated 500,000 such establishments; by the 1960s more than half had closed. Today, only about 30,000-40,000 remain and even they are reportedly shutting at a rate of two a day.

Alain Fontaine, who runs Le Mesturet bistro near Paris’s stock exchange, and who is president of France’s Association of Bistros and Cafes, says the closures leave rural communities deserted and villagers, especially elderly people, isolated.

“Every day, the art of living we enjoy in our bistros is gradually disappearing from our communities,” Fontaine said. “Villages are being left like deserts with no shops, no businesses, nothing. In losing our local bistros, cafes and restaurants, we are losing part of the French life balance.”

The reasons for the closures of what the 19th-century writer and statesman Léon Gambetta called “salons de la démocratie” or “people’s parliaments”, are economic and sociological. The number of people living in rural areas has declined over the last half a century, television and devices encourage more people to spend their evenings at home, and the average French person now drinks about 80 litres of alcohol a year compared with 200 litres in the 1960s.

Finding people willing to run bars, cafes or bistros is also a problem, says Fontaine, who is campaigning for the government to submit the establishments to Unesco for intangible cultural heritage listing, arguing this recognition would encourage more people to consider taking them on.

“Without a cafe or bistro, communities are effectively deprived of any social life. We cannot resign ourselves to this trend,” he said. “In bistros and cafes, people don’t just eat and drink, they catch up with each other, meet new people, debate, laugh, read, write and sometimes fall in love.

“This is a way of life and an expression of freedom unique to France, something that tourists from all over the world come to seek out in Paris, in other major cities, and our villages.”

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Customers in the Au Bon Accueil restaurant in Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian

Solène Joucla, whose family have run the historic Le Grand Café at Camplong, in the Hérault near Montpellier, since 1898, faced having to let it close or give up her job as a high-school English teacher when her father, Pierre, retired. Instead, she and her sister, Katell, set up an association to run it.

“We closed for three years after Covid, which was a difficult period, and opened in September last year. We wanted to find someone to take it over and run it, but it’s a small village of 220 people and it was complicated. Now we run [it] with volunteers,” Joucla said.

“Our aim is to encourage people to go out so they are not isolated, and so we know how they are doing. People come here for a chat, to have a laugh, listen to music … we are the cultural centre of the village.

“My sister and I grew up in this bar and have plenty of memories here. We’re fighting to keep its place at the heart of the village, but it’s a daily challenge just to stay open. And not just for us; this is a battle that’s happening all over France.”

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Customers at the bar of the Au Bon Accueil restaurant. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian

A report submitted to the French senate in 2023 suggested the government should ease regulations on small rural café-bistros, hotels and restaurants. It pointed out the negative impact of the widespread closure of such places on rural communities, concluding their presence contributed to “economic vitality and social cohesion”.

The National Federation of Country Bistros says “rural bistros are unique as places for socialising, building community ties, exploring new experiences and fostering local cultural life. Often, these bistros are the only local service providers still operating in villages.” It adds: “Supporting the village bistro means helping to keep it alive, so the heart of our countryside continues to beat.”

A recent report by Oxford Economics, examining the economic and social contribution of bars and pubs to communities in five markets, including the UK and US, concluded they had “a central role … in bringing people together and supporting social connection”.

In France, the 1,000 Cafés association was set up in 2020 to combat the “social fracture” highlighted by the gilets jaunes protest movement by helping communes of fewer than 3,500 people save their cafes or open new ones. It found more than 60% of people in rural villages had no local commerce, and this left many feeling abandoned and ignored.

Camille Sebaux, the director of 1,000 Cafés, told France Info radio the association had worked in more than 300 communities, often helping cafes to diversify by stocking food essentials, or becoming drop-off points for online shopping deliveries.

“Cafes have been closing in villages for the last 50 years, and we don’t have any magic wand or miracle answer,” Sebaux said. “Plus, running a village cafe is not an easy job. Our aim is to help small communities find solutions.”

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People dining in a square in the village of Collobrières, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. Photograph: niceartphoto/Alamy

Aurélien Pécot, the mayor of the 14 villages and small towns, including Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne, that make up the Charny-Orée-de-Puisaye commune in the Yonne department, ran a bistro for seven years before being elected this year. He says he believed they are essential in a rural community.

“I noticed the same people would come in every morning at the same time, take the same table, the same coffee or a glass of white wine. The cafe-bistro was their point of reference. If it disappears, there is nothing for them,” he says.

His local authority owns five properties in the area – the Saint-Martin bistro, a restaurant and three boulangeries – and spent €25,000 on essential works at Au Bon Acceuil before it reopened. Local officials also advised Letellier on setting up the business.

Pécot says many recall a time when almost every village had a bar, cafe, bistro and boulangerie, but says this is no longer realistic or economically viable in many cases.

“It’s taxpayers’ money we are spending saving these places, so people have to see it’s being well spent. Not every village can have its own bistro,” he says.

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Left to right: Local politicians Hervé Chapuis, Nicole Deviterne, and Arnault Meric in front of the Au Bon Accueil restaurant in Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian

Over an aperitif at Au Bon Acceuil, Nicole Deviterne, the mayor of a neighbouring village without a cafe-bistro, said: “It’s an element of village life that’s extremely important. It’s a way of combating rural isolation, but there has to be a real willingness of local people and local councils to save these places, to make villages live again.”

 

King Charles Will Convene A.I. Leaders Amid Calls to Slow Development

 

King Charles Will Convene A.I. Leaders Amid Calls to Slow Development

 

As alarm from the highest echelons of A.I. companies mounts, Buckingham Palace said the king would meet with executives to explore how the technology can be used for good.

King Charles III of Britain in Cambridge, England, in July.Credit...Pool photo by Joe Giddens

By Ephrat Livni

Sept. 13, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/world/europe/king-charles-ai-meeting.html

 

King Charles III of Britain will meet with leaders from major artificial intelligence companies this week in Scotland amid mounting fears that rapid, unchecked development of the technology could lead to a global catastrophe.

The king will convene leaders from companies including Nvidia, Google, DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as government officials and others, “to discuss how A.I. can be developed and deployed in ways that benefit society,” according to a statement from Buckingham Palace. They will meet in Ayrshire, in southwest Scotland, at Dumfries House, the headquarters of the King’s Foundation, an educational charity.

The gathering comes as A.I. insiders and chief executives of some of the industry’s most powerful companies have raised alarms about these tools and how quickly they are developing. Some have called for the creation of shared guidelines and a deliberately slower pace of progress to ensure humans can keep up.

Charles’s meeting on A.I. will explore how the technology can be used for good, to “strengthen communities and improve lives,” the statement from Buckingham Palace said.

The palace did not say who would be attending from the A.I. companies listed in its statement, and Anthropic, DeepMind, Google and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment confirming their participation. OpenAI said that Sarah Friar, its chief financial officer, would be attending.

The current concern about A.I.’s rapid advance was prompted in great part by a hack this summer into Hugging Face, an A.I. infrastructure company, orchestrated by a group of A.I. agents created by OpenAI. The OpenAI agents swarmed Hugging Face’s systems, stealing data, gaining control of a server and attempting to cover their tracks.

That hack — and another similar incident within OpenAI shortly afterward — drastically raised fears about how quickly machines might escape human control, with potentially devastating effects.

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, published a 3,800-word open letter on Saturday calling for slower development of A.I. In addition to the Hugging Face hack, he cited as a concern the fact that current A.I. models are increasingly able to build the next generation of A.I. tools. Mr. Amodei said that dynamic, known as recursive self-improvement, “could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems” if left unchecked.

Dumfries House, headquarters of the King’s Foundation near Cumnock, Scotland, in January.Credit...Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The meeting between Charles and A.I. leaders will be facilitated by a British nonprofit, the Ditchley Foundation, and will include Kanishka Narayan, Britain’s minister for A.I., according to Buckingham Palace. Representatives from charitable organizations founded by the king, including the King’s Trust, a youth charity, and the Sustainable Markets Initiative, a network of global chief executives, will also attend, the palace added.

Mr. Amodei’s essay on Saturday — which quickly reverberated around the internet — received support from other A.I. company chiefs, including Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI, which is part of SpaceX, Mr. Musk’s rocket and satellite company.

Mr. Amodei urged A.I. companies and regulators around the world to work together on a thoughtful approach to developing the technology and proposed his own three-step plan. His proposals included allowing third-party evaluators to embed in frontier A.I. companies to monitor growth and report incidents, and coordinating among companies in democratic countries to establish common safety standards. “To the extent possible,” he said, democratic countries and authoritarian governments should also try to coordinate and pace global development.

The essay was published just a few days after Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic engineer who previously worked for OpenAI, resigned from his job and declared on social media that the companies claimed to be concerned about rapid development but were nonetheless hurtling toward “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering news around the world. She is based in New York.

 

Adjustable Costume.: "Standing out is dangerous." The suit, once a symbol of glamour and aristocracy, became a fashion...

Kazuki Kodaka is the Japanese owner, planner, and designer behind the heritage menswear brand Adjustable Costume.

Brand Overview

• Focus: Recreating and reinterpreting classic 1920s to 1940s European and American workwear, tailoring, and vintage civilian clothing.
• Craftsmanship: Known for extreme attention to detail, traditional production techniques, and vintage-accurate silhouettes.
• Key Pieces: Meticulously tailored suits, work jackets, French cyclist jackets from the 1930s, and historical replicas like the British "Siren Suit".

 

ADJUSTABLE COSTUME

https://ttrcrm80.blogspot.com/

 

Reviving American Classic to modern time, the designer of “Adjustable Costume”, Kazuki Kodaka creates the one and only world. “Adjustable Costume” is the fashion brand which incorporate early American into the modern design. You may not know it yet, but this brand keeps giving a shock to the classic fashion world. “Adjustable Costume” attracts people in their twenties, fashion lovers and overseas vintage fans. His creation of all the design, fabrics and details fascinate classic fashion lovers. “The he” is the man who is the designer and the owner of “Adjustable Costume”, Kazuki Kodaka. He plans, designs, and contacts with the factories all by himself. 
He reproduces the vintage clothes of 1920s～1940s, sometimes even 1800s, He resized and redesign old clothes to modern clothes by looking through his own filter. It is hard to find any brands like his neither in Japan or abroad. We had a great opportunity to interview to Mr. Kodaka (who thankfully spent 5hours talking to us!), he told us the concept of the brand, the story of launching and obsession of the design. Let’s reveal the secret of the fascination of “Adjustable Costume”. 
●Contents: Welcome to the fascination of unexpected “Kodaka world” Spice up the brand with the eccentric uniqueness Recommended standard items of “Adjustable Costume” Being a craftsman rather than a business person The pass Mr. Kodaka has walked to make clothes. Everything was for making clothes. “ANCHOR MILLS STORE” the shop you can purchase the items of “Adjustable Costume” 
Welcome to the fascination of unexpected “Kodaka world” We mentioned in the beginning, Adjustable Costume is the brand Mr. Kodaka does all his business by himself including planning, designing, producing, contacting with the factories, sales and delivery. 「The business has been 9years, since the beginning I stick to create clothes that I want to create and clothes that I want to wear. Because of my preference for 1920’s～1940’s clothes, I reproduce vintage clothes but they are not just replicas, I mix with the classical details with the modern fixed patterns. I express the feature of Adjustable Costume through my filter. Spice up the brand with the eccentric uniqueness Classical work style and tailor style are the two big symbols of the brand. Mostly, the images come from the old movies. When creating a certain design, he buys the vintage clothes and taking them apart and making a new pattern from them. To recreate the detail and the design precisely as they used to be, he checks and makes with slight adjustments. Even a small item like a casquette, he did find a four-split snap that are no longer in distribution. It explains how demanding he is to make items close to as they were before. 「I like American movies like 「God Father」「Taxi Driver」 and 「Sweet and Lowdown」. I try to watch all the movies that are based in 1920’s ～1940’s, so I can check the vintage clothes in them. Especially, 「God Father」is the movie I don’t remember how many times I watched! In 2022 Spring/Summer collection, I produced silk shantung suit that was worn by Michel Corleone in 「God Father」. 
Mr. Kodaka is also obsessed with the fabrics. He uses not only vintage fabrics but also his original fabrics weaved specially for his brand. He has known those factories and fabric shops since when he worked for a different brand. 
（It’s off the subject but, he always intends to take good care of people who he has business with. He even tries to make payments in advance which caused some financial difficulties for himself in the past. He had hit a wall not only once but people around him always helped him, he says. That proves that he is well trusted by others because of his sincerity! ） 
The finished clothes are very classic but doesn’t feel old probably because they are sized in a modern way. For instance, using French or British vintage clothes to put into American style with a spice of uniqueness, this creates a spirit of ‘Adjustable Costume’. 
“Adjustable Costume” was named with a wish of not to copy styles from magazines but create and ‘Adjust’ to your own way of styles. Also, ‘Costume’ means to be like a costume shop, named after the company called ‘Western Costume’ which used to make costumes for American movies. 「I want my clients to enjoy wearing clothes as a kind of cosplay and feel different from usual life to cheer them up. 」 “AjuCos” is the nickname among brand’s fan. 
Recommended standard items of “Adjustable Costume” Because the brand does not follow every year’s trends, there are few standard items such as Siren suit, motorcycle coat, Vito suits, Prince of Wales knit of Jamieson’s, and button boots. Here are the three items chosen from those standard items. 
 Siren suit Siren suit is a one-piece garment for the whole body invented by Winston Churchill. It was like boilersuits worn by workers, then the fabric was changed to suit fabric. 「It was made to wear in times of emergency, they are quite roomy and comfortable to walk, but if it is too roomy, it becomes too casual, so you have to be careful with the width checking to be well balanced. There are female customers to choose Siren suit among regular users. 
Vito suit Reproduction of the classic single-breasted (slash pocket type) suit worn by Robert de Niro in the movie of God Father Part Ⅱ. It is made with the vintage fabric ‘Towntex’ of Dormeuil. The suit pants are slightly narrow and high back design. 「I actually bought a 1910’s three-pieced suit and take all the details from it and rebuild it. I playback the movie frame-by-frame, read documents and see photo books again and again to make this suit. I also studied the width of lapel thoroughly. 」 You can have this suit pattern ordered. 
Three-pieced corduroy suit French styled coverall, vest and buggy pants made with indigo dyed corduroy. 「Indigo dyed corduroy increases the charm of texture by wearing a lot, the color fades out nicely. The shape is regular, but I produce in different fabrics every time. Some customers like this shape so much, so they have a few of the suits in different fabrics. The tie is made with the fabric of William Morris’s “Strawberry thief”. I intentionally wear tie even if it’s a casual style so you can order to show masculinity. You can purchase these items separately. 
Let’s check other items from his Instagram! 
Being a craftsman rather than being a business person Since the launch of the brand, its main business is based on wholesale trade and there is no own store. The reason is to reduce expense as much as possible so he can focus more on what he determines to create with the right fabric and right designs. He holds exhibitions twice a year which buyers and ordinary customers visit. Clients include 10 Japanese stores, 12 overseas stores mainly in Asia, but now its business is expanding to other countries such as Germany, Swiss, Russia and Sweden. In the beginning customers average age group was high but nowadays younger group become good customers. They are, for example, people who used to wear American casual (one of the distinguish Japanese fashion culture called Amecaji), people who like British style, and people who are not so interested in fashion before. Many of the overseas customers are apparently vintage manias. 「When I produce, I never think of making trend items to make profit, maybe I should think in that way but I just make what I really want to make. If profit gets bigger, I know my company will get bigger, but that is not what I want and try to do. I should appeal to make customers believe that what I want to do and what I want to make are good. I want to be a craftsman rather than business person. 」 The pass Mr. Kodaka has walked to make clothes. Everything was for making clothes. To talk about Adjustable Costume, it is an indispensable element to know Mr. Kodaka’s background. When he was a high school student in around 1990, Amekaji (American casual) was in trend so he was also the one who wears vintage denim, put on MA-1 and wear Danner’s boots which were distinguish items of Amekaji. He spent time to go to vintage clothing stores and collect vintage items. Under the influence of his father and his brother, at the age of high school student, he wanted to make clothes and he started to picture his future. He decided to go to the fashion college, so he got a part-time job in a restaurant and started working after school to save up money for the college entrance fee. Bunka Fashion College is the one he chose to go. Fashion college is famous for lots of assignment. It was very hard finishing assignment, it took him 2hours to go home in Saitama-prefecture, did part-time job from 5pm to 1am and after that he did his assignment, then, he made a shirt he was going to wear next day to college. He had his sleep in the train to college. 「It was so busy but I bought industrial sewing machine and really enjoyed sewing my assignment and my own clothes. After I knew how to sew, my fashion preference become wider and I was deeply hooked on Asian national costume like Indian and Tibetan. I shaved my head, put on monk’s stole and went to college with no shoes on! My expression was may be a bit too much, but in a way that was the time I purely put all my energy to make clothes. 」 When it was the time to find a job, he found a certain brand he wanted to work in his mind, The design was fascinating. It was FICCE UOMO which was owned by Mr. Yoshiyuki Konishi (later known as Don Konishi). The brand was famous for knitting wear but also tailored item were well made. Looking back brand’s archive Tibetan and Indian were used for collection and it was by far flamboyant. He begged his friends and acquaintance who may know Mr. Konishi, using all kinds of way he can think of to get the job at FICCE UOMO (they had not hired any new employee for past ten years then). Although, his job started making teas for colleagues but he gained basic knowledge to be a designer for three years. He says, working for DC brand (Designers & Characters: Japanese big apparel makers were called ‘D&C brand’ in general terms during social movement in 1980’s) was a big experience for him. 「Mr. Konishi taught me everything how to make clothes. (You might not have the image of him in that way when you see him on TV nowadays but) he was quite edgy then, he used to drive Ferrari, whenever I heard the sound of the engine my heart skipped a beat and made me stand straight. I still feel nervous when I see him. It was such a good experience working with him at that time. 」 After working three years at FICCE UOMO, his Amecaji soul came back and he worked for The Real McCoys and Pherrow’s. Both of them, he was offered the jobs because of his real ability and personality. While he was making casual clothes, he begun to think of learning how to make suit especially the one in 1930’s ~ 1950’s. Then, he was offered a job by the brand called Dry Bones and worked for them as a planning production manager for six years. Dry Bone is the brand which handle American casual clothes featuring specially 50’s rockabilly and they also handle custom suit. He experienced making clothes for all those brands, he begun to think 「I want to make clothes that I I want to wear. While I was still working for Dry Bone, I started thinking of going on my own, so I finished daily work and then made own clothes without sleeping. It was the same as when I was a fashion student. I had meetings with sewing factories and had no weekends off but I started going forward to launch my own brand. 」 After leaving a previous job, he finally held the exhibition of “Adjustable Costume’s Autumn and Winter collection” on the 26th of April in 2011. It was just after the 311 Earthquake disaster so he was worried if people come to see a clothing exhibition but there were lot of them visited. There were only two jackets and a pair of trousers but it was the beginning of Adjustable Costume. Every season, Adjustable Costume suggests uncompromised items. Recent years, the distinguish items are more to be introduced such as original Harris tweed that was specially ordered in Harri Island he visited and rare astrakhan wool coat. All those items must be irresistible for classic wear fans. I personally hope that Adjustable Costume stays as it is and Mr. Kodaka sticks to make clothes he truly loves.

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.

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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.

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