Is 'The Gentlemen' Netflix Series Connected to Guy Ritchie's Movie 'The Gentlemen'?
"The world of 'The Gentlemen' is a little bit of me. I’m thrilled we have this opportunity to inhabit it once again."
Published March 11 2024, 2:33 p.m. ET
One of Netflix's newest shows, The Gentlemen, may look and sound a bit familiar. But the streaming giant isn’t exactly making it clear why it looks and sounds familiar.
“The Gentlemen sees Eddie Horniman (Theo James) unexpectedly inherit his father’s sizeable country estate — only to discover it’s part of a cannabis empire,” reads the Netflix show synopsis.
“Moreover, a host of unsavory characters from Britain’s criminal underworld want a piece of the operation. Determined to extricate his family from their clutches, Eddie tries to play the gangsters at their own game. However, as he gets sucked into the world of criminality, he begins to find a taste for it.”
Those host of unsavory characters from Britain’s criminal underworld come from the mind of Guy Ritchie, the same guy behind the 2019 film The Gentlemen.
Is 'The Gentlemen' series the same gentlemen from 'The Gentlemen' film?
In addition to sharing a title and creator, there's a shared universe between The Gentlemen film and The Gentlemen Netflix series. According to the press release, the show is “inspired by the award-winning director’s 2019 movie of the same name, featuring a new cast of characters, it’s set in the same heightened and often hilarious world of toffs and gangsters; one with the breeding and the birthright, the other with the brawn and the belligerence." So there are different characters, but it's the same universe.
In a Nov. 4, 2022, piece in Deadline, Guy said, “The world of The Gentlemen is a little bit of me. I’m thrilled that with Netflix, Miramax, and Moonage we have this opportunity to inhabit it once again. We’re looking forward to bringing fans back into that world, introducing new characters and their stories and I am excited to be doing it with this extremely talented cast.”
'The Gentlemen' looks and feels like London.
If The Gentlemen looks like it was actually filmed in London and not just soundstages, that's because it was. The series was shot at Alperton Studios, Badminton House, Loseley Park, Stoke Court, Wrotham Park, Bramshill College, Billingsgate Market, Brandon Estate, St. Paul’s Church, Southwark, Printworks, Rotherhithe, and The Reform Club.
When asked about filming, Theo James, who plays the lead Eddie Horniman, Duke of Halstead, said, “When you’re in these places it makes you very aware of this huge family lineage that dates back centuries. There are oil paintings of ancestors on the walls, so you can literally see how wealth and land is handed down through the generations. The idea of how deep set privilege and class is in our society is really at the very heart of The Gentlemen and you feel it viscerally in those locations.”
The cast is a mixture of cable's finest and a Guy Ritchie favorite.
You’ll recognize most of The Gentlemen cast. Theo James was in The Divergent Series and the most recent season of The White Lotus. Kaya Scodelario was seen in another teen-friendly trilogy, Maze Runner. Daniel Ings was recently in The Marvels and another Netflix series, Lovesick. Joely Richardson co-starred in one of TV’s first "prestige" shows, Nip/Tuck.
Rounding out the cast is Vinnie Jones, the most familiar face in the Guy Ritchie universe. The former footballer got his start in cinema with 1998’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and also worked with Guy in 2000's Snatch.
