Genre entertainment of modest ambition that overdelivers on the execution: They don’t make ’em like Netflix’s The Gentlemen anymore. Not often, anyway. Its effervescently violent story of a posh duke turned weed kingpin — it’s Downton Abbey meets Breaking Bad — played mostly for laughs but with a welcome hard edge when it needs one. What really distinguishes it is the screwball-level zip of the wittily profane dialogue from creator Guy Ritchie and showrunner Matthew Read, which Ritchie’s surprisingly restrained direction helps its fine cast deliver in style. The thing moves like some earl’s Alfa Romeo.

The season’s cold open sees a battered and bruised Edward Horniman (Theo James), the 13th Duke of Halstead, dragging himself by one arm across a vast field, following directions he finds on a note where ‘X’ marks the spot.

Three months earlier, when our story really begins, some time has past since we last saw the Hornimans of Halstead Manor, and things are mostly looking up. Sure, failson Freddy (Daniel Ings, aka Lyonel “The Laughing Storm” Baratheon from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) is in rehab. But daughter Charly (Jasmine Blackborrow) is back from school, with her kind-seeming husband Nanny (Benjamin Clementine), a close aide to the king, and their adorable baby son in tow. Mother Sabrina (Joely Richardson) is looking well, as you’d expect from characters played by Joely Richardson. So is Charly’s secret father Geoffrey (Vinnie Jones), the family’s soft-spoken but very formidable gamekeeper-turned-fixer. 

Presiding over all this Duke Eddie. The killer instincts he honed in Her/His Majesty’s Army — which Freddy, at least, has alleged long predate his career as a soldier — helped put him in charge of a now-sprawling illegal marijuana empire that has floated the family fortunes like they haven’t seen in generations. He’s done it all in a fruitful, if often uneasy, partnership with Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), heiress to a criminal empire, as beautiful as he is handsome. Her big-time crime boss father Bobby (Ray Winstone) oversees operations from his palatial accommodations in prison. (More about that in a moment.)

The plan that Eddie and Susan put together over the course of Season 1 is working like a charm. Secret marijuana fields on the property of cash-strapped lords have provided a stream of income to his family and hers that is both lucrative for all parties and almost entirely safe from prying eyes. The operation has gone international, with a franchise in Italy overseen by a lowlife aristocrat named Cico (Michele Morrone). 

Cico arrives at the big party that sets the scene with his date, a beautiful blue-blood named Bella (Benedetta Porcaroli, a truly wonderful name). She and Eddie get on quite well, with a flirtatious, implication-heavy conversation about lingerie and dominance that could light your cigar. Cico is an obvious dirtbag and liability, by contrast. Joining them at the dinner are Aisha (Maya Jama), their Middle Eastern liaison, and her friendly (and princely) date Amir (Amra Malissi). Finally there’s Lord Hawthorne (Hugh Bonneville, clearly having a blast playing a comically dissolute aristocrat for once), an influential but cash-poor member of the House of Lords. 

His Lordship is key to Eddie’s plans for the future. Hawthorne holds sway over elections for a vacant hereditary peerage, which would give Eddie, if elected, a seat in Parliament. This would give him a position through which he could influence the passage of a marijuana decriminalization bill, one he seems to think would be good for business but Bobby Glass wants killed. Hawthorne sells out for pennies on the dollar…but he wants a crack at Susie’s handsome, heterosexual brother Jack (Harry Goodwins) to seal the deal.

The Italian guests provide the episode’s main course, however. Bella’s godfather (ha ha), Marco Moretti (Sergio Castelitto), is the boss of all mafia bosses in Italy, and naturally he would have liked to have been notified that Eddie was growing weed beneath her estate. As a make-good, he has requested that the Duke purchase him a Botticelli at auction, or so Cico says. 

But when an unexpected bidding war that Eddie and Susie win (much to his chagrin) devolves into a motorcycle chase when the painting gets stolen, the pair discover that Cico has double-crossed them. He drove up the bidding himself via a proxy and never had any plans to hand over the painting or contact Moretti at all. 

But Eddie and Susie are no dummies. Traveling to Bella’s estate in Italy to meet with Cico, they inform him they’ve invited the don, and alerted him to Cico’s transgression. Moretti feeds Cico to his own pet tiger, agreeing to go directly into business with Eddie, who will pay for his protection across the Boot. 

There’s just one issue, and you’ll have to bear with me: A supernatural entity called the Bannik (Jimmy Vee), a dwarf-like spirit said to inhabit bathhouses in Slavic legend. The creature, which we rather unexpectedly get to see (though the characters don’t), answers questions about the future with either a pat on the back for yes or a scratch with his claws for no. The entity advises Glass to say yes to the Botticelli bidding war, no matter how high it goes…but Bobby somehow misses the scratch across his back when he asks if Moretti can be trusted.

So that’s certainly interesting!

The bathhouse imp excepted, this premiere is, wisely, The Gentlemen doing Gentlemen-ly things. The awkward gathering at Halstead Manor is a show tradition. The motorcycle chase is loads of fun even if you know how it will end up. The trip to Italy, featuring mafia bosses who feed people to tigers and the same Bach composition Marty opened Casino with, is equally good clean criminal fun. At the head of an enjoyable cast, James and Scodelario’s rapport remains sexy, though the show is clearly out to introduce some new romantic interests like Bella to kick the will-they-or-won’t-they can down the road a bit further. (I thought Cico might be Susie’s new guy at first, but I gave up on that long before the tiger got to him.) All told, it’s a promising start for a show whose grasp always seems to exceed its reach rather than the other way around.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.