‘The Gentlemen’ Season 2 review: Theo James anchors Guy Ritchie’s style over substance gangster saga

Hugh Bonneville as Lord Richard Hawthorne, a corrupt politician, is one of the fun things about Season 2 of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. Inspired by Ritchie’s film of the same name, The Gentlemen tells the story of a newly minted Duke, Eddie (Theo James) who realises that along with the title and the estate, he has also inherited a criminal deal with the scary gangster Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone).

With Glass in jail, it is his daughter, Susie, (Kaya Scodelario) who runs the business. The deal with Eddie’s family involves growing marijuana on the estate grounds and the rent is used for the upkeep of the estate.

While the whole of the first season involved Eddie trying different methods to get out of Glass’s clutches, in Season 2, Eddie and Susie have decided to go international and rope in European aristocrats who are equally impoverished and looking to make some money.

Eddie is trying to get the bill to legalise marijuana passed, which is where the sketchy Lord Richard comes in. While Eddie sees the legalisation as a business opportunity, Bobby does not. And when Bobby gets to know of Eddie’s plan to let the bill go through, he comes after him like a ton of bricks. The whole of Season 2 plays like a series of unfortunate events, with each attempt to solve a problem resulting in a bigger one.

Both Eddie and Susie find love — Eddie with the beautiful Bella (Benedetta Porcaroli) and Susie with a former boyfriend, Joe (Tyler Conti).  There is a lot of talk of how it is strictly business between Eddie and Susie, which begs the question of whether Season 3 (which has already been greenlit) will feature the two getting together or will the tension of “will they, won’t they” be a longstanding feature of the series.  

A still from ‘The Gentlemen’ Season 2
| Photo Credit:
Netflix

There is a prized falcon, Middle Eastern royalty, the Mafia, a wedding, a christening, a Botticelli painting, feuding siblings, Colombian drug lords, a plane crash, born-again Christians and quotations from scripture with the usual brand of torture, sudden deaths, sharp suits, sharper edits, and quirky subtitles one has come to expect from Ritchie.

James invests his considerable charm in his role as the reluctant gangster-peer while Scodelario is bright and brittle as Susie. Daniel Ings as Eddie’s coke-addled brother Freddie spends most of the season in rehab but remains the loose cannon that could upset the best-laid plans. Susie’s chief weed grower, Jimmy (Michael Vu) makes a welcome if brief appearance.

The suits are extremely well cut and James as well as the other men, including Giancarlo Esposito as the scripture-quoting American billionaire, Stanley Johnston, wear them very well. The jury is still out on the women’s clothes. Though Bella’s outfits are the height of Euro-chic, Susie’s fringed jacket and flared trousers take some getting used to. And what is with all the shades? Susie and Eddie are forever in sunglasses, sometimes bizarrely at night.

Season 2 of The Gentlemen has widened its scope and goes by in a flurry of posh and not-so-posh accents, drugs, fine wines, cigars, torture and murder. It is so forgettable that one would be hard pressed to remember anything from the show except perhaps the shades and Johnston comparing the Duke’s trials to Jesus’ temptation in the desert. 

The Gentlemen is streaming on Netflix