Gentry and Gangsters: The Gentlemen Is Back
Guy Ritchie’s satirical series The Gentlemen returns for a second season. Ray Winstone explains why, for him, the line between the aristocracy and the underworld was always blurred.
By Philip Dethlefs
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There are plenty of films based on TV shows. In the streaming age, it’s gone the other way: series based on hit films are everywhere – but real hits are still rare. The Gentlemen is one of them. The Netflix series, spun off from Guy Ritchie’s gangster comedy of the same name, went down well with critics and audiences alike. Now the crime satire, in which the line between landed gentry and gangsters keeps blurring, is back for a second season (streaming from 3 September, eight episodes).
For Ray Winstone, who plays crime boss Bobby Glass, that line doesn’t really exist anyway. He’s sceptical about the landed gentry. “Nobody gets there by staying honest,” the actor, famous for playing hard men (The Departed, Sexy Beast), said in an interview. “If you’re an honest bloke going to work, you’re never going to afford a house like that, an inheritance like that. So you were a villain. You were a gangster, one way or another. And now we’re sort of turning that around.”
A Duke in a Drug Empire
In season one, former soldier Eddie Horniman (Theo James), aka the Duke of Halstead, inherits his late father’s grand country estate. There he finds a cannabis farm that’s part of crime boss Bobby Glass’s (Ray Winstone) thriving drug empire. At first, Eddie wants to shut it all down. In the end, he decides otherwise.
“These (aristocratic) people have got lazy, and they’ve got no money left,” says Winstone, whose distinctive voice and East End accent make him perfect casting as a gangland boss. “We grow weed on your land, give you a bit of money for it. And you keep your mouth shut. And we take control. That’s basically, in a nutshell, what’s going on here, I think.”
Almost. Because Eddie gets drawn deeper and deeper into the criminal world, takes out rivals like shady American investor Stanley Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito) and ends up as Bobby’s partner. Together with Bobby’s tough daughter Susie (Kaya Scodelario), the Duke of Halstead now runs the illegal cannabis business.
Once You’ve Sold Your Soul
“Basically, it’s about deciding, as a human being, at some point to bend your own moral principles,” says Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad, The Mandalorian), no stranger to playing villains. “You allow it because you get something for it, because you profit from it – at someone else’s expense. Then you sell your soul once, so to speak, and think: after this, I’m out. But then you realise: the second time, it’s easier to sell your soul.”
Season two of The Gentlemen picks up about a year after the end of season one. Eddie has found his feet and now wants to grow the business, including into Italy. But Bobby, who is sitting in a luxury prison, holds him back and makes increasingly reckless decisions that unsettle both Eddie and Susie. Meanwhile, ego-driven Eddie grows ever more ambitious, gets involved in politics and risks breaking Bobby’s trust.
Cult Villain Vinnie Jones, Against Type
Former footballer Vinnie Jones is back, too. In The Gentlemen he plays estate manager Geoff, who has a special relationship with Eddie’s mother Lady Sabrina (Joely Richardson). Ever since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), he has worked with Guy Ritchie again and again and become something of a cult villain.
In The Gentlemen, the 61-year-old isn’t playing a menacing heavy but a quiet, reserved man. “People were saying: he’s been playing the same part for years,” Jones says. “Then Guy said: come on, get involved and show a different side of yourself.”
Guy Ritchie’s Fingerprints All Over It
A big part of the show’s success is that Guy Ritchie himself is involved and directed several episodes. Instead of recycling the film with Matthew McConaughey, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, he tells a story of its own with new characters – now including Hugh Bonneville as Lord Hawthorne.
In style, humour and themes, Ritchie stays true to himself with The Gentlemen. His signature is unmistakable. The mix of British humour, class dynamics, manipulation, power games and underworld swagger makes the eight new episodes good fun, too.
Translated from German with AI (Claude by Anthropic).
