The Goods: Film Reviews
At around the thirty-four-minute mark of Gangs of London’s second season finale, we check in with Ed and Shannon Dumani, who are keeping a watchful eye out through the curtains of their room in the Red Lion Motel. In the adjoining ensuite bathroom, filling the space from wall to wall, they’ve piled the entirety of Asif’s stolen heroin shipment. They’ve pulled a double-reverse-Uno-card betrayal on Marian, and stolen the shipment from her and Luan in turn.
You know who feels curiously absent from Season 2 of Gangs of London? Finn Wallace.
S2 E6 of Gangs of London is the shortest episode of the entire show, as of this writing: a slender 49 minutes. Within that concentrated frame, it compresses some of the very best and the very worst qualities of Season 2.
Who are “The Investors”?
Of all the characters in Gangs of London who could act as the “heart” of the story – the player with the most sympathetic motives and framed in the most sympathetic light – it’s peculiar that Season 2 seems to have settled on Luan. More than Sean, more than Elliot, more than Marian, more even than Saba, at this point he’s the character I’m rooting for hardest to succeed.
So: Sean Wallace is – big, theatrical sigh – still alive.
The first shot of Gangs of London S2 E2 is pretty inspired, NGL.
There was little doubt that Gangs of London would be renewed for a second season: it was a big hit for Sky Atlantic in 2020, to say nothing of the prestige it conferred upon production company Pulse Films.
I have my bones to pick with the way that Gangs of London’s first season wraps up – quite a few of them, honestly – but I also don’t want to come out of the gate sounding too negative.
There’s a scene early in Episode 8 of Gangs of London which finds Sean Wallace at his lowest ebb.