Between Mercy and Vengeance

I thought that a television adaptation of The Gentlemen was a pretty risky idea. The film is fairly solid, a fun bit of Guy Ritchie’s standard British thug storytelling, elevated by an interesting framing device and a star-studded cast. But the television show does away with most of that. It reboots the story, loses the original cast, and basically is a version of The Gentlemen in name only. About the only shared DNA it has is the idea that British nobles can’t pay to maintain their estates, so they resort to letting a marajuana-growing criminal organization move in and make underground grow farms on their land.

It’s a solid idea that really can be adapted into anything, and the first season of NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it).’s The Gentlemen proves just that. It has Guy Ritchie’s same slick production values we always come to expect, but with a reset storyline that feels just as interesting, and vital, as the original film version. We don’t mind that old characters don’t return and new ones are plunked in their places, especially when those new characters, Theo James's Edward "Eddie" Horniman and Kaya Scodelario's Susanna "Susie" Glass, are so fun and interesting in their own right.

But over two years later we’re now into the second season, and the show has something different to prove. No longer do we need to know if this show could work at all, as the first season proved that. Now we have to wonder if we can get settled back in and, even more importantly, care about these characters again after such a long wait. While the ratings for the show have fallen off since season one (the long wait didn’t help at all in that regard), the show comes back firing on all cylinders and all the vitality that made the first season so fresh and interesting is still there, only know with a knife’s edge added to it.

In the time since we last saw Eddie and Susie they’ve been very busy, expanding the drug empire’s marajuana farm network from fourteen farms across British estates to many, many more. And they aren’t limited to Britain either, as connections with the Mafia in Italy have let them expand into Italian noble estates, pulling the same buried farm trick over there with grand results. It made the whole empire very profitable and very powerful, and that in turn has made Eddie feel like he should be given a bigger role, and more control, of the empire’s future.

Eddie’s next move would be to become a seated noble in the House of Lords, giving him a hand in directing legislation for the future of Britain. He does this with an eye towards legalizing marajuana, something he suspects will make the drug empire even more money as they would be able to use their same network to sell both legal and illegal strains of pot, double-dipping on the market for even more sales. But the drug kingpin, Robert "Bobby" Glass (Ray Winstone), doesn’t want pot to be legal. He thinks that would be bad for business. Eddie has to try and work around Bobby to get the deal made, trusting that the increased profits will ease any issues between him and Bobby. But if Bobby catches wind, well, then danger could come for Eddie and everyone he knows…

This season is an odd one, for multiple reasons. The first is that it’s bifurcated, with two half-season storylines it’s telling, despite the fact that the entire season was dropped on Netflix in one single chunk. One suspects that there was a plan, at one point, to do two half season drops, as Netflix loves to do, because this series took off and became popular, but then, for whatever reason, that plan was changed and the bifurcated season was made into a single dump, even if storytelling wise that doesn’t really make as much sense. The season had a cliffhanger ending halfway in that you can then spoil just by immediately clicking to the next episode, and that all just feels very strange.

But the weirder bit about the season is that, in many ways, it’s just a table-setting season. There’s a lot that happens, crosses and double-crosses, all while we see Eddie continue to sink deeper into a life of crime as a mastermind for this pot empire, but I wouldn’t say that anything was conclusively solved by the end of the season. Some bad guys are killed, some alliances change, but we’re left more or less in a similar position at the end of the season as we were at the start, with Eddie buying in, full bore, into the drug empire all while Bobby Glass talks about the big plans he has for Eddie. We both move forward and back without anything really getting decided, which leaves the story in something of a narrative limbo.

Because of that we have to invest in the smaller storylines of the season, not all of which are pulled off as well as I’d like. One solid storyline comes in the form of Susie getting pissed off at her father, Bobby, and veering off on her own to sell Columbian cocaine. She has the sales knowledge, and the know-how to build and maintain a secret drug empire, but before now her family never veered into cocaine because the kinds of men that sell those drugs are more violent, and irresponsible, than marajuana thugs. Where this will go, and what it means for Susie, is still a question mark, but it’s interesting to see her move away from her dad’s empire into something built more for herself.

On the flipside, we have a story about Eddie falling in love with the Italian Countess Isabella "Bella" Soranza de Parma (Benedetta Porcaroli), the goddaughter of Mafia don Marco Moretti (Sergio Castellitto). This relationship comes quickly, without as much time spent on scenes shared between Bella and Eddie. You’re almost led to think he doesn’t really love her and is just proposing to her to secure business interests, but that plotline doesn’t quite fit either. More time is needed for this storyline to really work, one way or the other, but in an absolutely packed second season of only eight episodes, which easily could have been split apart into two full seasons of eight episodes each, this storyline struggles to sustain itself.

I think that’s a flaw not only with the long development time between seasons, but also the fact that Netflix tends to order much shorter seasons now. There was a time when Netflix would give a show thirteen episodes to really let it develop, but frequently that is no longer the case. We’re lucky if we get ten, and more often get a cropped down season of eight. The Gentlemen is the kind of twisty, interesting story that really could have benefitted from more time to let the storylines breathe and so we could enjoy the characters we know as they fill the screen. This season whooshes by too fast, and you suspect it’s because the producers doubt they’ll get more than one more season to tie all this up, especially with how notorious Netflix is about cancelling shows in their prime. When a show goes to Netflix, it’s already on life support.

Which is a pity because even in its flawed second season form, this show is still great. The characters are interesting, the action is thrilling, and the direction is as slick as you’d expect from a Guy Ritchie production. The weakness in the storytelling is propped up by solid turns from the actors and gorgeous filmmaking, and it really does make the show watchable. What I am picking at are nits and small flaws that I wish were better, but this is still one of the best shows on Netflix at this point, and might be one of the best of the streamer’s whole run. If only they’ve give this series a few more episodes to cook. Then, I suspect, The Gentlemen could really fly.