Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Gentlemen’ on Netflix, A Series Spin-off Of Guy Ritchie’s 2019 Cannabis-And-Criminals Caper

If you watched Guy Ritchie’s 2019 film The Gentlemen and thought “I need to know more about the business of illegal weed in England,” then welcome to the new eight-episode Netflix series The Gentlemen. Created by Ritchie, inspired by his film, and co-written by Ritchie, who also handles some of the directing, this Gentlemen stars Theo James as the reluctant inheritor of his dead aristocratic father’s title and country estate. Becoming a Duke is one thing. But learning about the major cannabis grow op concealed on his estate’s grounds is quite another, and the bickering and scheming between family members and criminal factions pops off from there. James is joined in The Gentlemen by Kaya Scodelario, Giancarlo Esposito, Daniel Ings, Joely Richardson, Vinnie Jones, Ray Winstone, and Dar Salim.   

THE GENTLEMEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: “We don’t want to cause an international incident. Gentleman with the mustache, head in that direction, please. Gentleman with the eyepatch, head in the opposite direction.” Eddie Halstead (James), a captain in the British Army, is running the show at a crowded crossing on Turkey’s border with Syria. 

The Gist: But not for long. Eddie is soon visited by a lawyer, who tells him his father is on his deathbed, and he returns to the sprawling family estate to join his older brother Freddy (Ings), his younger sister Charlotte (Jasmine Blackborow), his mother Sabrina (Richardson), and longtime groundskeeper Geoffrey Seacombe (Jones). As “the spare, not the heir,” middle child Eddie has made a life for himself outside the peerage. Hence the army posting. But his father’s dying words declare him to be the family’s only chance at keeping their property and standing, and his will rejects sputtering cocaine enthusiast Freddy in favor of Eddie, who becomes the next Duke of Halstead. And as it turns out, that also makes him the landlord of the massive weed farm operating underneath the estate’s legitimate yogurt and livestock farm.  

Years before, criminal entrepreneur Susie Glass (Scodelario) had contracted with Eddie’s father to run her operation unnoticed on the estate’s 15,000 private acres. And that’s a deal she’d like to continue. But Freddy the posh fuckup is eight million pounds in the hole to a Liverpudlian cocaine cartel, and a mysterious and very wealthy individual named Stanley Johnston (Esposito) is getting aggressive about his offer to purchase Halstead Manor outright. If Eddie were to sell the land, there’s nothing Susie could do about it. Well, nothing legal, anyway. So to keep Johnston at bay and settle Freddy’s sizable debt, Eddie travels further down the underworld rabbit hole with Susie as his guide. He keeps the estate in the family, her business doesn’t skip a beat, and his brother’s red ink is cleared from the ledger. 

Because The Gentlemen is Guy Ritchie doing crime stuff, nothing is as simple as paying to retain the status quo. Freddy might not be the only one in Eddie’s family with side troubles, there is the matter of Susie being the elegant and stylish front person of a larger and more violent criminal group topped by her father Eddie Glass (Winstone), and also the sticking point that the Liverpudlians, fishmonger Tommy Dixon (Peter Serafinowicz) and his bearded brother John “The Gospel” Dixon (Pearce Quigley), consider Freddy’s debt personal. And when Tommy shows up at Halstead Manor with an extremely specific list of demands, the tenuous financial arrangement Eddie and Susie thought they had established is put into serious and outrageous jeopardy.     

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ritchie’s 2019 film The Gentlemen is an enjoyable enough romp, as long as you understand the romp you’re prepared to enjoy is typical of the Ritchieverse, where a cocked up underworld scheme requires Matthew McConoughey in tweed and a metric ton of overheated dialogue and insular slang to solve.  

Our Take: It’s a plus for The Gentlemen that Theo James is immediately likable as Eddie Halstead, because we’re willingly along for the ride as the new Duke discovers more and more of the wild shit that exists beneath the surface. That’s the surface of a world inhabited by the moneyed elite, where wagers in the millions fuel underground prizefighting matches and people like Giancarlo Esposito’s immaculately-suited Stanley Johnston throw around obscene sums of money just to indulge their eccentricities. And it’s the very surface of his newly inherited estate, which is actually the roof of Susie Glass’s elaborate grow op. Of course we want to find out what happens next, and of course – because this is Guy Ritchie we’re talking about – what Eddie does next will invariably include entire new factions of mouthy and dangerous criminals with competing agendas. 

The Ritchie touches are all over this Gentlemen, like nonlinear narrative beats, colorfully foul dialogue, and insular, slang-heavy “crime speak.” (In one inspired sequence, scribbled onscreen notes guide us through Susie’s cryptic financial negotiation with an underworld boss. Apparently, puff trade game respects powder trade game.) And though it’s not clear anyone really asked for an expanded universe spinoff of Ritchie’s original 2019 film, The Gentlemen still has the components to be enjoyable, and should lend itself to lark-y binging on streaming.  

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, anyway.

Parting Shot: Eddie’s brother Freddy was a wild card from the moment we met him, so it feels right the first episode of The Gentlemen concludes with the eldest Halstead brother high on cocaine, wearing an elaborate chicken costume, and waving around a double-barreled shotgun. 

Sleeper Star: Fredward, Edwina, Wham Tam, Chuckles – as with most Ritchie joints, the pile of character nicknames in The Gentlemen is towering. It’s one of the writer and director’s most reliable devices. But it’s also successful, because it helps us familiarize ourselves with the cliques, loves, and loyalties inside the latest criminal world he’s built.  

Most Pilot-y Line: As you’d imagine, Freddy is not happy to learn that he was leapfrogged in the last will and testament of Lord Archibald Horatio Landrover Horniman, 12th Duke of Halstead. “It’s the fucking law! It goes back to the Bible, the Old Testament, Cain and Abel. It’s the will of God. the firstborn son gets everything. It’s fucking…it’s…it’s…it’s…it’s…it’s “primogenital,” is what it is!”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Like most of Guy Ritchie’s material when he’s in caper and kooky criminals mode, The Gentlemen is a romp. Chippy, funny, stylish, cartoonishly violent, touched with mild absurdity, it’s also in streaming series form for the first time, which makes it binge-watch encouraging.  

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.