In 2019, after two Hollywood films, the director of
Scams, Crimes and Botany
, Guy Ritchie, returned to his first love: the crazy settling of scores between gangsters.
His film
The Gentlemen
features an Oxford-educated drug lord growing his cannabis plants on the estates of his penniless fellow aristocrats.
The feature film weaves an eccentric and abundant universe that just begs to be expanded.
It's done with this series which focuses its cameras on one of these blue-blooded families forced to join forces with traffickers to maintain their ancestral home.
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This arrangement came as a shock to Edward, the youngest son of a duke who had a career in the army.
To everyone's surprise, he was designated by his father as heir.
Here is the UN peacekeeper immersed in the world of drug dealers.
Each attempt to escape is only a succession of catastrophes and the opportunity to make new enemies.
The more Edward tries to get back on the straight and narrow, the deeper he sinks into crime.
A sector for which he is rather gifted!
In this universe with codes that go beyond him, this novice is guided by the pragmatic Susie Glass.
She has a keen business sense beneath her false femme fatale exterior.
From a gang of Albanians to the ultra-Christian thugs of Liverpool via the Irish gypsies, Guy Ritchie's imagination and politically incorrect wit are in action.
A statue of the Virgin Mary on its way to Lourdes becomes a cache for illicit goods.
And slang is well established, which gives rise to quite delicious subtitling when the terms become too nebulous.
Code of Honor
Thanks to the long running time of the series, the Briton finds a delightful balance between comedy and “pulp” action scenes.
And takes advantage of the contradictions between the code of honor of his hero and that of the mafiosi.
Wanting to save a life is not always a good idea.
Guy Ritchie also revisits his favorite score of the class struggle between the privileged and the proletarians.
The filmmaker suggests in passing that by controlling estates and farms for centuries, British aristocrats are the original mafiosi and gangsters.
The series also spins another metaphor: that of the jungle, where you have to hunt to survive, and the chic zoo, where everything is brought on a silver platter.
Seen as a predatory diplomat in
Downton Abbey
, Theo James portrays with great charm an Edward with little help from his family and tempted by the dark side of the force.
His older brother, Freddy (Daniel Ings, brilliant jester), burns the money he doesn't have and happily consumes all kinds of artificial paradises.
The two actors remain amazed to have been able to film at Badminton House, in the family of the Dukes of Beaufort since the 17th century.
“It was surreal.
The current Duke and his wife had just had a baby and thought they had said yes to a Bridgerton-type costume project.
They saw me trudging through their mansion with a gun in my hand, disguised as a chicken
,” says Daniel Ings.
No doubt, Guy Ritchie has found Olympic form.