Loved ‘The Gentlemen’? Watch these 4 dark crime comedies
Loved ‘The Gentlemen’? Watch these 4 dark crime comedies
From Jon Hamm robbing his rich neighbors to a family hiding a triad empire, these shows keep crime weird.
“The Gentlemen” just finished Season 2, and it’s honestly a hard show to replicate. Guy Ritchie has such a specific sensibility and unpredictability to his work that it’s almost impossible to try. But I tried anyway. So if you’re looking for a follow-up show where crime mixes with family, money, big egos, bad judgment, and enough comedy to keep things light even when the worst is happening to these poor souls, try these. Here are my picks for the best shows to watch next if you loved “The Gentlemen.”
The Gentlemen
When aristocratic Eddie inherits the family estate, he discovers that it’s home to an enormous weed empire — and its proprietors aren’t going anywhere.
If you loved the crime-family chaos, watch: ‘The Brothers Sun’
Bruce Sun (played by Sam Song Li) has a problem in “The Brothers Sun.” He thinks his family is normal. Then his older brother Charles (Justin Chien) shows up in Los Angeles after their father is attacked in Taipei, and Bruce starts learning the real story behind what his family is. Charles is an enforcer for the family’s Taiwanese triad operation. People are trying to kill him. Their mother Eileen (Michelle Yeoh) knows much more about all of this than Bruce does. So that leaves Bruce in a great fish-out-of-water scenario, trying to update his worldview before he gets killed.
It’s really this idea of a family made of those who are good at crime and bad at crime that makes this a great “Gentlemen” follow-up. Bruce reacts to organized crime like most normal people would — really badly. Charles, on the other hand, can handle assassins and then go about his day. It’s reminiscent of the Eddie / Freddy dynamic. The difference is Charles already knows this world and starts questioning whether he wants it, while Eddie keeps moving deeper into crime like he’s discovering a hidden talent. Same family problem, opposite direction. And then Michelle Yeoh starts quietly taking over the whole thing, which, if you’ve seen her on-screen presence, is not a surprise.
The Brothers Sun
When a mysterious enemy targets his family, a Taipei triad member heads to Los Angeles to protect his strong-willed mother and oblivious younger brother.
If you loved watching Eddie realize he’s good at crime, watch: ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’
A rich hedge-fund guy loses his job and starts robbing his neighbors. That’s Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) in “Your Friends & Neighbors,” and then he learns he’s kind of good at it. His marriage to Mel (Amanda Peet) has fallen apart, his career is gone, and the giant expensive life he built needs huge amounts of money to stay afloat… so, he steals from his friends because he knows what they own, where they live, and when they’ll be out of the house.
Now I like this show a lot, so I’m kind of biased in the comparison, but I think Coop has a lot of Eddie in him. Once he gets a taste for the criminal life, he kind of likes it. He realizes his whole previous existence was all bull crap anyway. And he gets much more of a thrill from stealing from his friends and hiding it. And he’s loaded with plenty of rationalizations so he can convince himself to keep going, just like Eddie. Except both guys eventually reach the point where that explanation gets shaky because they keep choosing crime when they don’t have to. “Your Friends & Neighbors” is much more about divorce, sex, kids, status, midlife humiliation… but he has that same unsettling thing Eddie has now. He’s good at this — and worse, he likes being good at it.
Your Friends & Neighbors
When a financial titan suddenly finds himself divorced and jobless, he starts robbing his wealthy neighbors to stay afloat. Stealing from his own social circle strangely exhilarates him—but he gradually gets tangled in a deadly web.
If Freddy’s screwups made you laugh, watch: ‘Big Mistakes’
The entire disaster in “Big Mistakes” starts with Morgan Dardano (Taylor Ortega) stealing a diamond necklace for her dying grandmother. Which is almost touching right up until you remember the stealing part. Morgan is a New Jersey teacher while her brother Nicky (Dan Levy) is a pastor. Neither has any business dealing with serious criminals, but the necklace belongs to exactly those kinds of people, and suddenly the siblings are being blackmailed into doing jobs for a drug operation. Their mother, Linda (Laurie Metcalf), is still around too, because, of course, being threatened by criminals does not get you excused from regular family problems.
This one reminded me of Freddy almost immediately. Except “Big Mistakes” just removes the competent brother. Nicky and Morgan are both improvising, arguing, screwing up, trying to protect each other, and then screwing up again. It’s more openly funny than “The Gentlemen,” with the two of them surviving mostly by continuing to move forward after the last bad idea. And there’s a lot of fun in that.
Big Mistakes
Blackmailed into working for some very dangerous people, two deeply incapable siblings become the most disorganized duo in organized crime.
If you loved the weird criminals and black humor, watch: ‘Bad Monkey’
I’m eagerly waiting for the second season of “Bad Monkey,” which drops in December, so keep that in mind because this is definitely the wildcard pick. It starts with some tourists pulling a severed arm out of the ocean, and Andrew Yancy (played perfectly by Vince Vaughn) immediately decides this is his problem now. Yancy used to be a Miami detective; at the moment, he’s inspecting restaurants in the Florida Keys, and the arm at least gives him something to chase. That chase brings in medical examiner Rosa Campesino (Natalie Martinez), Eve Stripling (Meredith Hagner), Bahamian fisherman Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet), developers, scammers, corrupt people, murder, money… all with the hot, humid Florida backdrop.
This is the wildcard pick because Yancy is solving crime instead of building an empire. But “Bad Monkey” has the same attitude toward criminals that I like in “The Gentlemen.” Nobody is just a Mean Bad Guy. Everybody has some stupid scheme, personality defect, obsession, or way of making the situation worse. The violence is real, but the show doesn’t suddenly get super dark when somebody dies. Obviously, it’s a different world completely. Florida instead of English estates, developers instead of aristocrats. But it’s a different take on the same sort of idea, with a nice tongue-in-cheek approach to it all.
Bad Monkey
A detective turned restaurant inspector in Southern Florida is pulled into a world of greed and corruption after a tourist finds a severed arm while fishing. And yes, there’s a monkey.
More to watch after finishing ‘The Gentlemen’:
‘The Sticky’ | Prime Video
The Sticky
Ruth Clarke, a tough, supremely competent middle-aged Canadian maple syrup farmer has had it with being hemmed in by the polite, bureaucratic conventions native to her country’s identity. With the help of Remy Bouchard, a pint-sized local blockhead and an aging Mike Byrne, a low-level mobster, Ruth changes her fate — and transforms the future of her community with the theft of millions of dollars’ worth of maple syrup.
‘Barry’ | HBO Max
Barry
A hit man from the Midwest moves to Los Angeles and gets caught up in the city’s theatre arts scene.
‘Brassic’ | Prime Video
Brassic
A group of working-class friends finding unconventional ways to win at life in suburban northern England. These lads have dealt, scammed, bribed and conned their way through adolescence, but now, their dealing and stealing is catching up with them and a whole load of trouble is heading their way.
‘Deadloch’ | Prime Video
Deadloch
Two vastly different female detectives are thrown together to solve the murder of a local man in the sleepy seaside hamlet of Deadloch.