Director Guy Ritchie is serving up a new Netflix series, and it's not what you would normally expect from a Guy Ritchie hero.
"The Gentleman" is a captivating mix of menacing thriller, satire, soap opera, gangster caper, and absurdist humor, according to a review by The Associated Press. It delivers its fair share of violence and will have you sitting on the edge of your seat.
"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" is described as a British take on "Breaking Bad." The series follows an English aristocrat who inherits his family's asset-rich but cash-poor estate and farm only to discover that it also houses a massive secret weed farm run by gangsters. Simultaneously, he urgently looks for ways to bail his eccentric older brother out of massive debt to even more gangsters.
How the main character navigates the criminal underworld is viewed throughout eight episodes.
"Without knowing it, you have stepped into a world that you are not familiar with," he is told.
With Theo James cast as the duke, he says he loved the "idea of a man falling down a rabbit hole and learning to love violence and power and what that means."
James says, "He thinks he knows power because he's been in the army and he's part of the aristocracy, but he realizes power comes in many different forms."
The series presents Ritchie's typical examinations of criminality, but instead, it's less frantic than his films in the past.
"We're used to seeing Guy Ritchie in 90 minutes - it's hard cuts and bombastic, which this is. But we had to make sure that we had characters that felt that they could live through eight episodes and beyond," says James.
The AP mentions Ritchie's series is a spin-off from his 2019 film of the same name and features con jobs, a man dancing in a chicken suit, the always-welcome presence of Vinnie Jones, manic murder chases, gagged hostages, a Lamborghini heist, a few beheadings and a soundtrack worthy of religious chants.
"We've just been given a much bigger canvas," says Beesley. "The strokes are as thick, the paint is as thick. It's just a multi-multifaceted bit of drama that incorporates everything that I think audiences like - drama, comedy, action. It's all in there."
"He's making the point that the British landed gentry aristocracy really are the original gangsters of the British class society," says Daniel Ings, who plays the duke's older brother. "There's kind of like a need to fight for survival in both of those worlds."
The show stars Joely Richardson, Giancarlo Esposito, Shane Walker, and Kaya Scodelario. Scodelario plays Susie, a very cool but very no-nonsense underworld captain, who dispenses such captivating phrases as, "Once you start the killing, you have to finish the killing."
"It was one of the rare times where I instantly knew I wanted to play this character with every fiber of my being. I kind of loved her immediately and wanted to get under her skin. I just knew that I could bring something to her and that she would be exciting," Scodelario says.
The cast hopes the series will find a worldwide audience despite its English roots.
"The heart of it for me is that it's a family drama," says Scodelario. "It's all these different families realizing that they all need each other to coexist, and they want to protect their family above everything else. And I think that's just a really interesting narrative."
The series begins streaming Thursday.
