The Gentlemen — Second season of Guy Ritchie thriller even better than the first

Review by C.J. Bunce

I called the first season of Guy Ritchie’s crime thriller series The Gentlemen “Quentin Tarantino without the bloodbathed operatic climax.” Was someone listening? Because the second season–a nonstop, breathless character study of a man bent on fulfilling a centuries-old legacy–is very much even more inspired by Quentin Tarantino, this time with the bloodbathed operatic climax. If the first season felt like Ritchie was experimenting in the style of American mob and crime stories, get your popcorn ready for a show fully on par with the worldbuilding and layered characters of The Godfather and The Godfather II–just add a mix of British accents from local cockney to posh King’s English.

One episode in and you’ll see why this season of The Gentlemen is better than the first. A frontrunner for the year’s best television series, it even has an exciting car chase and car-and-plane race sequence, the only action tropes missing last season. The new season is now streaming on Netflix, and you don’t want to want to miss it.

Theo James is back as Edward Horniman, now firmly established as the Duke of Halstead, and we see him at first near death, dragging his disfigured self along a barren field. Then we’re flashed ahead three months to a party of sorts at the estate. The underground marijuana business of the first season has expanded its tentacles into Italy. The incarcerated Bobby Glass, played by Ray Winstone, is still in charge, but his faculties are now called into question as he quotes an imaginary mystical creature who he calls the Bannik (played by Jimmy Vee). Co-star of the first season, Kaya Scodelario’s Susie Glass is still the strategist behind it all, carefully staying out of her father’s way while trying to build on her own ideas and maintaining relationships with her biggest business partners, including His Grace, Eddie.

At the big shindig are several attendees, including Cico, played by Michele Morrone, a less than competent new manager of the Italian drug trade who has leaked the carefully planned business to the head of the Mafia, Marco Moretti, played by Sergio Castellitto, who wants his share, which he figures is 40 million euros. But according to Cico, Moretti might take a Botticelli instead, and one such painting so happens to be coming up for auction in London. Cico has brought along with him a new face, Isabella ‘Bella’ Soranza de Parme, played by Benedetta Porcarolli, Cico’s lover and also the goddaughter of Moretti. Along with the Italian contingent is an Arab contingent and another Brit, Hugh Bonneville’s Lord Hawthorne. Why is he there? A certain peerage has a vacancy and Lord Hawthorne has the influence to name the successor. Eddie wants to rebuild his name and his family’s empire and it begins there. Also, a new bill that would legalize marijuana is coming up for a vote.

Eddie believes the drug empire Susie has built under her father, and which he has improved upon, would do better with two pipelines, one legal, one not. But Susie’s father is not interested and will do anything to get the bill shot down. Eddie decides to go around Susie’s dad. What’s the worst that can happen to Eddie?

The first great car chase includes motorcycles and the theft of that certain Botticelli. It’s a scene straight out of the best James Bond movie. The theft leads to a new arrangement between Marco Moretti and Eddie. While Eddie grows closer to Bella, a strange event occurs: Susie seems to be getting sidelined not just by her father but now by Eddie. Past relationships aside, nobody, including Eddie, puts Susie in the corner. Fortunately she has her own distraction, a former school chum named Joe (played by Tyler Conti) who her father rightly detests–he mysteriously shows up at the auction of the Botticelli.

As Eddie forges a new relationship with the head of the Mafia and is dismissive of the old man holding his reins, Bobby Glass, he’s unwittingly become Michael Corleone of The Godfather–including Michael’s first kill. Or is that kills? The parallels don’t stop there, topped off with a surprise marriage in Italy and all that came with Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola’s American mob story.

By the midpoint of the season Eddie has been taken to the woodshed by Bobby Glass and a family member is murdered. But not before Eddie’s estate is overrun by assassins, assassins bent on kidnapping his nephew as leverage. That’s the son of Eddie’s sister Charlotte aka Charly (she’s played again by Jasmine Blackborow) and her husband, Eddie’s former soldier pal Nanny, played by Benjamin Clémentine.

As with the first season, the cast this season is impeccable. Joely Richardson (The Sandman, Maggie) is back as Eddie’s mother Lady Sabrina, Daniel Ings is Eddie’s jealous older brother Freddy, who was passed-over as heir of the family. Harry Goodwins is back as Susie’s brother Jack, who seems more loyal to dad Bobby than Susie this round. Giancarlo Esposito received the wrath of Eddie in the first season, and he’s back pulling strings behind the scenes as nearby estate owner Stanley Johnstone. And Pearce Quigley returns to the morass as creepy religious nut turned creepy religious nut crime boss Gospel John, bent on revenge for the death of his brother last season.

But the best performance this season comes from the frequently soft-spoken and calming Geoffrey, the long-time family gamekeeper played by Vinnie Jones, also the not-so-secret father of Eddie’s sister Charly. Geoff’s loyalty goes beyond the loyal British estate manager, and you get the drift he’d be the same man even if Charly wasn’t his biological daughter. In a scene where the family is awakened by intruders, Geoff and Nanny partner to mount one of the best invasion defensives ever to arrive on the small–or big–screen. Again it’s the stuff of the best James Bond movie scenes, and also somehow straight out of classic Brit war movie sequences in Bridge on the River Kwai and Guns of Navarone. Jones and Clémentine, with the aid of Geoff’s conscientious and unflappable neighbor pal George, played by Master and Commander and Grantchester’s Richard McCabe, and some help from Charly and Mom, are all that good together.

The writers created this mobster story out of something unusual. On the one hand it’s a spin-off of Ritchie’s crime movie, also called The Gentlemen. And if the first season framework was laying a crime story on top of Monarch of the Glen, this is again carefully crafted atop the framework of The Godfather story. Why does Netflix tag the series as a comedy? No idea, it’s literally the last genre you’d place it. What is surprising is how this season stays almost entirely out of the crime of the families of the story–the drug dealing. The first season was far more immersed in the underground antics of drug consumers managing the drug business.

Just like Spielberg’s and Lucas’s movies wouldn’t be half without the music of John Williams, composer Christopher Benstead ups his game from last season with an emotionally charged blend of classical melodies inserted in the best way at the right times with Philip Glass-inspired glissandos, vibrant ballads and energized violins ready to rev up our blood pressures. And is that a stalking drum beat from The Last of the Mohicans?

Somehow Ritchie, who both writes and directs on the series, adds in more side-excursions than you can keep track of, like a Mafia hired gun who can only communicate via his cell phone translator, Stanley finally gets within reach of Eddie’s estate then hands it away, and a group of cannabis workers seek to unionize. But the first episode hits the ground running, and by the end of 50 minutes, you’ll feel like you watched an entire whirlwind action movie. After the second episode you’ll find out Ritchie’s team could do that twice. After eight episodes you’ll see they could squeeze eight of the year’s most exciting movies into their allotted eight hours of television. The only question you might ask is whether episode six or episode seven is the best hour of television this year. A contender for top prize for the year’s best TV series, catch all eight episodes of the second season of The Gentlemen now streaming on Netflix.

The Gentlemen hails from jolly old England, so in addition to being the tops in TV from anywhere this year, it also made us revisit our ever-building list of British TV recommendations. Despite so many series facing a slump in their second outing, The Gentlemen held its own at the #8 spot. Catch up with our reviews of other quality British TV series (including Australian and New Zealand shows you’d find on PBS, BritBox, Acorn TV, and Hulu) beginning with our Top 10: Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes, Zen, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, Mr. Selfridge, Guilt, The IPCRESS File, The Hour, The Gentlemen, Case Histories, and Shetland (especially the first seasons). You could stay pretty busy with our full list of top British TV recommendations: Deadloch, Eternal Law, Black Doves, The Artful Dodger, Van Der Valk, Sherlock (especially the first season), Troppo, Legends, This is Going to Hurt, Black Snow, Mystery Road: Origin, Humans, Death Valley, Dept. Q, Bodkin, The Bletchley Circle, Good Cop/Bad Cop, Grace, Steeltown Murders, Hinterland, Glitch, Mystery Road, Culprits, Harrow, Annika, Young Sherlock, The Day of the Jackal, Code of Silence, Luther, Professor T, and Supacell.

After you’ve seen all of those, try Marchlands, Lightfields, State of Play, After the Flood, I, Jack Wright, Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, Population 11, Sunny Nights, Protection, Traces, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Scrublands, The Survivors, Ordeal by Innocence, Unforgotten, The Bay, Wild Bill, Quirke, The Hatton Garden Heist, Requiem, The Gloaming, The Clearing, The One, The Tourist, The Tower, Collateral, Gone, Roadkill, Stay Close, The Salisbury Poisonings, and A Confession.

Other British series across genres that are worth checking out (a few still to be reviewed here) include fun romps like Monarch of the Glen, Para Handy, Cranford, Viva Blackpool, and As Time Goes By, and cozy mysteries Rosemary and Thyme, Father Brown, Hetty Wainthropp, and Death in Paradise. One of the best of all British productions is the reboot of All Creatures Great and Small, which is in our British Top 10 (and the original is good, too). Of course there’s always Doctor Who for your sci-fi fix (and spin-offs Torchwood and Class), The Watch for your fantasy fix, Truth Seekers and Sea of Souls for your supernatural fix, and Spaced for more sci-fi fun, and we really should add House, MD, for Brit lead Hugh Laurie’s one-of-a-kind performance. (We’ve also reviewed but don’t heartily recommend so much Dublin Murders, The ABC Murders, The Pale Horse, Reef Break, The One That Got Away, The Silence, The Five, The Missing, Thirteen, Broadchurch, and No Offence).