Gangs of London is back! After a two-and-a-half-year hiatus, the Emmy-nominated British crime drama is exploding onto our screens yet again with more shocking betrayals, more Machiavellian scheming, and more of the bone-crunching action that fans love. And thanks to the folks at Showmax, we were able to get early access to the first six of eight episodes, and to have a chat with three of the cast members about what’s to come.
[WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE FIRST TWO SEASONS OF GANGS OF LONDON]
For the uninitiated: Essentially a loose TV series adaptation of the classic PlayStation video game franchise “The Getaway”, Gangs of London’s bloody tale kicks off with the mysterious murder of London underground kingpin Finn Wallace. This prompts competing local criminal elements to make violent grabs for a piece of his empire, as his revenge-obsessed son and heir, Sean Wallace (Joe Cole), desperately tries to keep the wolves at bay.
As the show’s de facto lead, Sopé Dirisu’s Elliot Carter has had the biggest arc since he first appeared on-screen in a barroom brawl for the ages. An undercover cop sent to infiltrate the Wallace crime family after Finn’s death, he was a moral man who unexpectedly found both friendship and romance in this immoral world. In season two though, everything was upended as the Investors, the clandestine group actually pulling all the criminal strings in London, forced him into being their triggerman and doing some very bad things. But the end of the season saw the balance of power shifting in Elliot’s favour as the Investors were taken out, the unstable Sean ended up locked behind bars, and Elliot was granted a proverbial seat at the table as one of the new crime bosses of London.
Does this mean that Elliot has fully become what he started out trying to stop? Is there still any goodness left in him. “All will be revealed,” according to Dirisu:
Maybe not as quickly as some people would like, you know. I would challenge people who are just like, ‘Oh no, he’s doing bad things, he’s just a bad person!’ to interrogate things. When you say you’re going to change something from the inside, how quickly do you think you’re going to affect change? Especially when it’s a system that is so ingrained and entrenched. So, as one person, is he going to start taking down all the crime family straight away or is there something that he needs to do beforehand?
As Dirisu continues though, he explains that despite Elliot’s seemingly veiled long-game intentions, that he “is a man who has lost his moral anchor,”
I think he’s figuring out who he is to himself before he can be something to some other people. He’s left the police force, the police force has left him as well. He doesn’t have the same support system or structures. He hasn’t got his father anymore, the things that made him who he was. So, I think he’s on a journey to identify who he is to himself.
Interrupting that journey massively is the appearance of Zeek. Played by fan-favourite Warrior actor Andrew Koji, Zeek is a new addition to the cast whose origins have been shrouded in secrecy. The impact of his actions is felt immediately though, with Koji describing the introduction of his character as “like a grenade that’s been thrown into the mix of this world,”
He causes all this chaos and havoc because of his arrival, and he’s kind of like a human Terminator – just this unstoppable machine on a mission. He’s basically a lone wolf and an assassin. He’s a bit of a cold-hearted killer, but then we’ll find out that there’s more to him and his motivations than meets the eye; there’s more to him than you may think or expect.
Part of those motivations tie into Elliot’s backstory, which we learn in the season opener included a wife and son who both met a tragic end years ago in a hit-and-run accident. But now their deaths are being brought up again and viewed in a new light, giving Elliot a new set of priorities outside of attaining criminal status and power, according to Dirisu.
Money, the clothes, the cars have never been a motivating factor for him. I think it’s just a byproduct of him being in the situation that he’s in. But I think that actually the story of his family and being constantly reminded of that is, perhaps, the goodness within him constantly fighting to be recognized within himself, you know? To remind him of who he is, where he’s come from, why he’s done what he’s done. And it’s a constant sort of tug of war that happens over the course of this season.
The other newcomer in this season is Richard Dormer’s Cornelius Quinn. The black sheep brother of Mariann Wallace (Michelle Fairley), Finn’s widow and Sean’s mother who has now taken the reins of her late husband’s empire, he is brought in from the cold, so to speak, by Billy Wallace. Mariann’s youngest son has been put through the wringer, both emotionally and physically, during the first two seasons, with the most traumatic moment seeing him have his arm chopped off by Elliot (Brian Vernal). Feeling like he needs some more support, Billy reaches out to his estranged uncle, but Cornelius may be a bit hard to control once unleashed, according to Dormer.
Yeah, he’s fiery, which is why they had to get rid of him in the first place 20 years before. Because he was too reckless, too impulsive, and they couldn’t control him. So, he was kicked out, beaten and kicked out, and then Billy asked for his help. And so, he jumps at the chance because he’s thinking, ‘Well, now I can get back, I can wheedle my way back in and gain some power here’.
One of the first things you may notice about Cornelius is that he almost always has a particular weapon at hand: A shillelagh. Pronounced shil-AY-lee, the traditional Irish club is put to devastating effect throughout the show. It’s such an unexpected choice for a modern TV series, that I had to ask whose idea it was to include it. Unsurprisingly, the Irish born Dormer simply revealed “That was mine,”
I wanted to use that because I just thought it was… It’s such a brutal weapon, but also it’s skillful. You need to be skillful using it as it’s pretty lethal. As far as I know, it’s illegal to own one of one of those things. The end of it, the knot that is from the Blackthorn root, you can literally break concrete slabs with it. It is that hard. And almost impossible to break. And it stops swords, and, I mean, it’s a pretty lethal weapon. And we see it put to very violent use in the show.
Speaking of violence, Gangs of London has become synonymous with intense, jaw-dropping action scenes ever since it was first launched by co-creator Gareth “The Raid” Evans. The filmmaker turned showrunner brought all his considerable action filmmaking craft to the small screen, and despite him parting ways with the production at the end of the first season, Gangs of London has kept up that high bar. Having had his breakout in the historical martial arts drama Warrior, Andrew Koji is no stranger to action, but this is a very different type of action. Luckily for Koji, he has some good dance partners here as well.
I mean, obviously I got to work with some very high-level people in Warrior, and Sopé he’s up there, you know. He’s a very, very talented physical actor as well. I mean we got to do a fight scene which was about… Well, more time than we’ve ever had on Warrior to film a fight. But about 3 days, 3.5 days in this abandoned child’s home, this big fight scene in episode six. We beat the shit out of each other for 3.5 days [Laughs], and it was a pleasure to dance with Sopé. And it’s because he’s an actor who thinks about and cares about the motivation. So we’ve got these two colliding forces, Elliott, who’s there believing that [REDACTED FOR SPOILER], and Zeek is playing a very different game, thinking more on strategy and survival.
And according to Koji, the action got so intense, that for the first time in his career, there was a “casualty” on set.
There was a casualty involved which was the lens hood of a camera, which I’ve never done before, even in three seasons of Warrior… The camera works very different in Gangs of London. It’s up close and very, you know, personal and it gets in your space, so I turned around one time in that fight scene with Sopẹ́. And a nice right hook or whatever came round. I spun round and BOOM!, lens hood went flying and it got evaporated into pieces because of the power [Laughs].
Dirisu also elaborated on how the filmmaking has changed after Evans left, with the showrunner title first changing hands to Corin Hardy in season two, and now Peter McKenna stepping in as lead writer with South Korean filmmaker Kim Hong Sun (Liar Game, Traffickers) behind the camera as director.
I think that with the constant changing of showrunners, people could be worried that there’s like inconsistency or it’s volatile. But what happens is that all of these different creators bring something new to it. It’s like building blocks added on top of each other. And with Kim Hong Sun’s work this year, there is a different texture and flavor to the series. And I’m interested to see if our audiences pick up on that, you know. What’s the different temperature, the different perspective that he gives to the City of London? I’ve really enjoyed it, I loved working with him, I think he’s a very visionary director. And I think Peter, who has a history with gangland drama with “Kin” back in Ireland, is a very accomplished writer. So, I think, I hope that their work like really gels together for our audiences to enjoy.
Having already seen most of the new season, I can say that there is a lot for audiences to enjoy. While Gangs of London’s sophomore offering didn’t get reviews quite as strong as its debut season, with criticism levelled at its plotting being a bit haphazard, season three feels a lot more focused with two central mysteries driving things forward.
The addition of the always great Koji also brings an appreciated change of pace from the almost-cartoonish baddies of season three. We also have the returns of fan-favourite characters like Narges Rashidi’s Lale, Orli Shuka’s Luan Dushaj, Lucian Msamati’s Ed Dumani, Pippa Bennet-Warner’s Shannon Dumani, and Jahz Armando’s Saba, all of whom get thrust into extreme situations (especially be on the lookout for an extended action sequence with Lale that almost rivals the eye-popping sequence she got last season). The results – thus far – is seemingly a gripping and hugely entertaining return to form for one of the most enthralling criminal dramas out there.
Gangs of London season 3 is out now on Showmax!