The Gentlemen: tons of torture and cocaine

Guy Ritchie only does one thing but he does it very well: slick, violent, sweary, black comedy capers about the unlikely intersection between rich folks and the criminal underworld, invariably starring former soccer player Vinnie Jones as a lovable tweed-wearing thug. If you were hoping for something different from The Gentlemen, prepare to be disappointed.

If, on the other hand, you can never quite get enough of shotguns, stately homes, frantically crowbarred-in but still-quite-amusing one liners, rival gangsters, vast quantities of claret (in both vinous and sanguinary forms), torture, dolly birds, travelers, slightly annoying solecisms, fights, gambling and fat lines of cocaine, The Gentlemen is for you.

The experiment would be more interesting if it weren’t so obviously rigged

Vinnie Jones stars — no, I jest, it’s not that bad: he just plays the rough-diamond factotum who runs the estate and will no doubt be getting his boss out of all manner of scrapes like Jeeves with knuckledusters. The main character is Eddie Horniman (Theo James), who, despite being the second son, has just inherited the Dukedom, the big house and the 15,000-acre estate — much to the annoyance of the feckless coke and gambling-addicted first son Freddy (Daniel Ings).

Do ducal heirs ever get cut out of the succession in this way? I don’t think so. But the implausible premise sets us up nicely for a silly but enjoyable plot in which capable, smooth but tough ex-army officer Eddie has to undo all the damage repeatedly created by his incredibly irritating spendthrift elder brother.

The estate, of course, is on its uppers. Or it would be, except for the fact that — with the previous Duke’s permission — it has been used as a base for an underground marijuana processing factory supervised by Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) while her London crime boss dad Bobby (Ray Winstone) languishes in prison. She too, will no doubt be getting Eddie out of all manner of scrapes with her gangland muscle. Oh, and Giancarlo Esposito — the man who played meth lord Gus Fring in Breaking Bad — is in the mix too, playing a very rich, probably sinister American with his eyes on the estate, or possibly the drugs business.

My main worry so far is that few of the characters are especially likeable and that the episodes — eight in all, each running for more than an hour — feel about ten minutes too long. Perhaps that’s because the series started out as a 2019 film and has now been stuffed with just a little too much padding. Still, if you like Guy Ritchie, I doubt you’ll have much to complain about.

The Underdog: Josh Must Win purports to be a reality TV show with a difference. What this latest batch of typical reality TV contestants (Botox, fake tanned gals; excessively buff guys) in their typical reality TV house don’t realize is that the reality TV show, The Favorite, on which they think they are appearing is fake. No one is watching their ridiculous antics apart from a team of reality TV experts (eg., ex-Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw and Vicky Pattison, the former Geordie Shore girl who won I’m A Celebrity… in 2015) hiding next door. These experts have one mission: to covertly control the tasks to make sure that the underdog contestant, Josh, wins.

Who is Josh? A lovely, well-balanced, intelligent, thoughtful, polite, softly spoken boy-next-door type whose only unusual feature is that he works in the wrestling business. All his brash, pushy, oversexed, bitchy, backbiting, airhead fellow contestants spot him instantly as a fish out of water. The question is, can the team of experts use their skills to manipulate this crew of grisly preeners so that they don’t vote Josh out on the first round, and so that they end up choosing him as the most popular housemate?

The experiment would be more interesting if it weren’t so obviously rigged. By which I mean that the experts can manipulate the show in whichever way they wish, changing the rules as they go along so that, for example, even if Josh does get voted out first time they can yet arrange a reprieve caveat situation where someone else gets ousted instead. I call that cheating.

What makes it strangely addictive, though, is the interaction between the only person on the show you or I might consider to be normal and relatable — Josh, obviously — and all the unutterably fake weirdos surrounding him. It’s like a real-life (if reality TV counts as real life) replay of the scene where honest, sweet, small town boy Peeta goes to the capitol in The Hunger Games and finds himself in a bizarre, inverted realm where to be normal is to look — and act — like a total freak.

Yes, I hope Josh wins. But if he does so, I fear it won’t really be a vindication of civilized values and affirmation that nice guys sometimes can carry the day. Rather, it will be further confirmation that nothing you see on TV — especially if it’s branded “reality” — can be trusted.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazines. Subscribe to the World edition here.