Gangs of London

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.

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!!

I don't know what's wrong with people here who are commenting this show has action and gore so they don't like it. Also some nit wits here say this show doesn't have a story,I mean are high while seeing this? What else do you want from a show that has good drama, great action scenes. If you want something less action oriented then go somewhere else watch a silly Kardashian show. This show is everything what a good show about Gang's should be about. Give it a go don't listen to the haters

This has probably the most brutal opening of any show I've ever seen and it just keeps getting wilder. There's so much action(created by the guy who directed The Raid movies), so much tension, so much build up, domuch violence. It's really quite fantastic and I find myself biting my nails or staring in disbelief frequently with each episode. Characters are real and raw, talking and acting like real people. There's some corny shots of symbolism in some episodes that are a bit on the nose but the violence, the fights, the intrigue and acting are all top notch. I'd have loved more seasons of this.

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.