Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen TV series is being judged his best crime thriller in 7 years. The 2024 Netflix show gives him a sharper crime vehicle than the late-2019 film, and it does so with a new lead, a new estate, and a new cast built away from the movie’s old setup.
The core draw is Theo James as Eddie Horniman, an aristocrat who unexpectedly becomes the Duke of Halstead and then finds a hugely illegal setup on his estate. That gives The Gentlemen TV a cleaner engine than the film: one inheritance, one estate, and one criminal problem that keeps widening as Eddie realizes what he has inherited.
The Gentlemen TV in 2024
The 2024 series matters because it is not just another crime title from Ritchie. It is a spin-off set in the same world as The Gentlemen, but it introduces a whole new set of characters with no connection to those in the movie. That reset lets Ritchie reuse his crime-world style without being tied to Mickey Pearson, the film’s central figure.
Matthew McConaughey led the late-2019 film as Mickey Pearson, and that version anchored itself in a very different setup. The TV series moves the action onto Eddie Horniman’s estate, so the story turns on class, inheritance, and criminal discovery rather than on the old film’s lead character. For viewers of Netflix and fans of Ritchie’s crime work, that is the practical difference: the series stands on its own instead of functioning like a repeat.
Theo James and Eddie Horniman
Theo James gives the series its most useful pivot. Eddie Horniman is not introduced as a gangster first; he is an aristocrat who is pushed into power and then forced to deal with what is already hidden on his land. That structure makes the series easier to follow than a crowded crime ensemble and gives each new layer of the illegal setup a direct consequence for one person.
That clarity is part of why the 2024 series is being ranked above the 2019 film. Ritchie’s recent move into TV has given him more room to build a crime story around discovery and escalation, instead of compressing everything into a single film’s runtime. The result is a cleaner crime thriller shape, even before comparing it with MobLand.
MobLand and the clash
MobLand is described as Guy Ritchie’s most well-known TV show at the moment, with Tom Hardy playing Harry Da Souza in a story centered on warring crime families and their evergrowing list of conflicts. Even with that attention, The Gentlemen TV is being treated as the stronger crime thriller, which creates a useful split between visibility and quality.
The comparison is not subtle: MobLand may be the bigger current TV title, but The Gentlemen TV is the one getting the better crime-thriller judgment. Ritchie’s move from movies to TV has produced a new version of his crime formula, and this series looks like the cleaner one. The one thing the comparison still does not fully answer is which creative choices made the 2024 series land better than the late-2019 film, beyond the shift in tone and the new cast.
