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
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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