Guy Ritchie’s Netflix thriller-comedy series The Gentlemen gives crime movie director the chance to broaden his storytelling and characters
- Guy Ritchie, famous for humorous, frenetic crime films Snatch and Sherlock Holmes, directed the first two episodes of eight-part Netflix series The Gentlemen
- Cast members, including Max Beesley, Kaya Scodelario and Theo James, talk about their characters and working with Ritchie, who co-wrote the script
When we first meet the hero of Guy Ritchie’s new Netflix series, he’s not exactly what you’d expect from a Ritchie hero. He’s a peacekeeper for the United Nations, under orders to de-escalate tensions. Can that really last, this being a Guy Ritchie series? Doubtful.
The Gentlemen, a captivating mix of menacing thriller, satire, soap opera, gangster caper and absurdist humour, will eventually have blood splashing on walls, but it delights in the promise of violence more than the acts themselves.
“Like Jaws,” says cast member Max Beesley. “You don’t see that shark for an hour and a quarter of the film. But the idea of it is terrifying, you know? And I think that’s quite clever.”
The Gentlemen, a sort of British take on Breaking Bad, follows an English aristocrat who inherits his family’s asset-rich but cash-poor estate and farm only to discover that it also has a massive secret weed farm, run by gangsters. At the same time, he urgently needs to bail his bumbling older brother out of massive debt to even more gangsters.
How the newly titled duke navigates this criminal underworld propels the eight episodes. “Without knowing it, you have stepped into a world that you are not familiar with,” he is told. The series begins streaming on Thursday.