Gangs of London

Sure, season 1 had its issues. Unbelievable scenarios, undercooked characters and weird pacing with it peaking at the halfway point, and then lumbering onwards. So yeah, you had to turn a significant portion of grey matter off to enjoy it, but man, it was worth it for the fights/shootouts choreography, editing and brutality. And if you could suspend the huge amount of disbelief and shark jumping, it was pretty entertaining with how over the top it ended up being.

Season 2, on the other hand, has made the mistake of doubling down on all the ridiculous and sub par elements of character writing and plot, asking us to turn off our brains to the point of drooling lobotomy, whilst offering almost none of the rewards of excellent fights/shootouts, editing, creative camerawork and crazy conspiracy cheese of the previous season.

I can't even be bothered to list or explain how bad all the elements of season 2 are. It is just SO stupid, it's beyond belief! Beyond the suspension of disbelief capability of anything with a consciousness.

From the practically total absence of police/ bystanders or concern for leaving evidence everywhere. Like just dragging a freshly murdered gangster from a car, for no reason, in front of security cameras and an amazingly oblivious staff member. To having a skinny woman who you could believe with some effort, could be capable of shooting many men in season 1, to entirely unbelievably beating a number of beefy men in hand to hand combat in season 2. To the point where a main character somehow has a 10x zoom level on a 1x optic at the end, to the ammo capacity of handguns rivalling a drum magazine, to the very poorly integrated digital blood/fire/explosion effects... to even call season 2 stupid is an insult to stupidity.

I don't know if the new producers, apparent non-involvement of Gareth Evans, if the budget was drastically reduced, if some kind of Covid related restrictions/ people just not bothering to do a half decent job at anything any more, or what is responsible for it... but it is borderline unwatchable now. However it does continue the story and have occasional flashes of what made season 1 good.

I can't fathom anyone greenlighting a season 3 after this, but if they do, they'd better make sure they wrap it up with a home run.

Here's the issue with trying to review series, where one season is vastly inferior to another. I'm leaving my overall rating as is, for the excellence in parts of season 1, which truly do deserve merit.

Season 1 - 8/10.

Season 2 - 4/10.

I dont think that the producers set out to make a realistic portrayal of gang life in London. This was created for entertainment purposes and needs to be viewed as such. Gareth Evans forte is extreme action sequences and this is undoubtedly where this series excels. The action set pieces are truly intense and very over the top. People don't just get killed on this show. they are butchered and the concept of less is more is left on the floor as teams of machine gun wielding mercenaries do battle with crazed criminal families and drug kingpins in seemingly never ending gunfights. The police never seem to hear all this gunplay and the criminals are able to "clean up". Now, i find all this totally acceptable ...as I said this is not an in depth of portrayal of gang culture in London it is a series made in the spirit of entertainment for those of us who like their action as stylised as a Kung Fu movie with a side order of extra tomato sauce ...by the bucket load!!

Gangs of London is just a flat out awesome show. I do agree with most of the reviews that season 1 was better than 2. Even though season 2 is still worth watching, it just doesn't measure up to the greatness which was season 1. Some people don't like it because of how brutal it gets but I don't get what they were expecting from a show about gangs? It is so much more than just some action show too...it's a very intense drama that will keep you at the edge of your seat. Some people want to compare it to Peaky Blinders and while it's not quite as good as that it's still a really good show. I think because both are violent British crime dramas they get compared a lot. I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes a good action drama.

Some of the best hand-to-hand fight scenes since the Bourne movies. Really fresh choreography and rawness to them, very cleverly staged.

The plots are hit and miss, some feel tired and predictable, some redundant. Following the undercover cop is compelling, and the gang lieutenant father/son pair is well done. Wish there were better female roles. The main guy Sean is very dull and how many times must we watch him standing on a roof staring at London?

Rest of the acting is solid, the camerawork and editing and music are great.

Since the acting, dialogue, and action was good I kept watching, hoping for more interesting plots to unfold.

Look, a lot of this show is unrealistic, but it's John Wick unrealistic...which means it's unrealistic hyper-reality but still works. At least for me. I absolutely *loved* season 1 and told friends it was the best show since Peaky Blinders. It had some of the best, if not the best, fight scenes I'd ever seen in a TV show. They used their environments and were highly creative. It reminded me of The Raid movie which, extremely minor spoiler, is shown in the background of season 2. Then I watched season 2 and told them it didn't come close to season 1, even with the suspension of reality. I don't know if they replaced the fight coordinator, or what, but it was like the difference between Jaws and Jaws 3. Now it's hard to recommend anything beyond season 1, although I think the second season can be split in two. The first half is absolutely terrible (akin to the Scream movies where the damsel in distress runs up the stairs instead of out of the house). It's inexcusably bad and nonsensical. The second half is unquestionably better than the first half, but that's still not saying much. Season 2 is about 30% of the quality of the first season. They need to get the original writers back, fight coordinator back or whoever they didn't include for the second season if there's to be any hope for season 3.