“The most violent British drama ever” is back for its second season. Gangs of London – streaming on Neon – somehow manages to up its extreme violence to a whole new level, says an impressed Daniel Rutledge.
Back in 2020, Gangs of London premiered as the exciting TV debut from Gareth Evans, the acclaimed action filmmaker responsible for The Raid movies. It was a hit, with critics heralding the series as “a modern crime family masterpiece… complete with engaging drama, exhilarating action and fine performances all around”. English tabloids meanwhile labelled it “the most violent British drama ever” as it triggered a bunch of viewer complaints in the UK with its graphic depictions of torture and intense, deadly combat.
Apparently seeing the extreme violence as the primary selling point, season two ups it to a whole new level. The red band trailer is absolutely insane, packing into two-and-a-half minutes more ultraviolence than most feature-length movies can manage. Highlights include multiple bits of eyeball trauma, a slow-motion depiction of a bullet blasting through a chap’s head and a truly sickening throat slitting by way of dragging a poor bloke’s neck across the jagged remains of a broken window.
With today’s technology, anyone can make super-violent movies and TV shows; but it’s still very difficult to do so in ways that feel fresh and exciting. For that, Evans is one of the very best in the business. He’s innovated with innumerable ways of depicting violence on screen, consistently making it feel like we’re seeing something we’ve never seen before, or never seen in the way he’s doing it. In season two, Evans doesn’t direct at all, instead executive producing it and co-writing the first episode. Corin Hardy is the primary director as he was on season one and he has some notable stylistic differences to Evans. He often prefers to keep the camera stiller and loves emphasising the length of his frequent long takes. He doesn’t totally eschew that kinetic flair that made us all fall in love with The Raid, he just uses it more sparingly. And rest assured that Evans’ fingerprints are all over season two, despite his lack of directorial credits.
In the opening scene, we see some chaps celebrating a new shipment of sweet-as assault rifles, but their celebration is cut short as some masked gunmen crash the party. The intruders are led by a lad named Koba who executes a couple of men but lets another go—only after force-feeding him a few 5.56 caliber rounds of ammunition whole and making him murder one of his own buddies. So yeah, this guy means business. He’s sending a message to the other gangs to abide by his rules, but also a message to us the audience that he’s one of the show’s new bad guys. Koba is played by Waleed Zuaiter who is excellent at giving off seriously intimidating, sinister looks. He’s not the big bad, though—that would be ‘The Investors’ introduced at the end of season one. Koba is just their new enforcer and gosh darn he’s ruthless. Even a couple of the primary characters who somehow made it all the way through season one alive prove unable to survive even one hour of season two thanks to Koba’s ruthlessness.
Thankfully viewer favourite Elliott Finch also made it through the debut season alive. This man has such an awesome look to him, just such a great screen presence and it’s a joy to be reacquainted with him. His triumphant season two entrance is so badass I dearly wish I’d gotten to see it with a big audience, I can just imagine how fun it would’ve been to be among the intense cheering and whooping it would’ve triggered. He’s immediately fighting for his life, of course, specifically against an enormous hulk of a man who constantly groans as he attempts to kill our dear Finch. For that, he gets a broken knee before he’s graphically and slowly strangled to death, with the camerawork emphasising how the blood vessels in one of his eyes gruesomely pop.
The first episode climaxes with a home invasion that has some really well-done horror movie elements layered into it, as well as some gnarly shotgun, kitchen utensil and sledgehammer business. But its centrepiece is an underwater fistfight that is presented as a breathless one-take in which two men battle to the death while trying desperately not to drown. You may be sick of hearing the Lacrimosa segment of Mozart’s Requiem in movies and TV shows at this point, but I sure ain’t. It’s just such an amazing bit of music and it’s used bloody well in this scene, especially as it bursts back up in the mix as the victor of the pool fight finally bursts back out above the surface.
The worst thing about season one was how it ended in a similarly incomplete way to how The Raid 2 ended. It introduced a new set of super overlord characters in The Investors, who made some of the preceding storyline pointless and finished much of it on an unsatisfying, “just wait for season two” way. It’s not like the story was the main strength of the show, but it was an enjoyably pulpy plot filled with numerous dastardly characters and with a mystery hanging over it that ended up with a fairly mediocre conclusion.
But season two is off to a fabulous start. The drama is once again engaging, the performances once again fine and the action once again exhilarating. Koba is a hugely promising new addition, there’s troubling and intriguing drama in the Domani family and our guy Finch is kicking serious arse again. All the elements are there for the showrunners to right the narrative wrongs of season one by delivering a more satisfying wrap-up this time. I am very excited about seeing how they try that. But to be honest, more than that I’m excited about seeing the eight remaining episodes for all the wildly inventive new ways they showcase brutality and again deliver what will undeniably be the best TV violence of the year.
