This article is taken from the December/January 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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I usually write about television dramas I have enjoyed, but this month I’m starting with a warning. Were this an obscure series buried on a streaming service I would not bother, but season two of Gangs of London is a high-profile, big budget extravaganza, its glamorous cast clad in carefully-styled designer wardrobes as they cavort and slaughter each other across the capital.

The gangs are Albanians, Kurds, Georgians, Irish mobsters and more. At first I wondered if the drama, showing on
Sky Atlantic and NOW, was a parody, a post-modern take on twenty-first century capitalism. There are frequent references to the “investors”, a shadowy group of financiers. Much of the storyline, such as it is, unfolds in expensive offices, upmarket restaurants or perfectly-styled homes that could feature in a glossy interiors magazine.

They are quickly turned into slaughter-houses. The ultraviolence is relentless, graphic, bloody and sadistic, an attempt perhaps to compensate for the meagre plot and two-dimensional characters. A psychopathic Georgian enforcer called — in a rare flash of wit — Koba (Stalin’s nickname) force-feeds bullets to one of his victims. An Irish gangster shoots a woman dead then has passionate sex with a glamorous female Kurdish mobster. A dodgy banker is taken to lunch in a private dining room; first the expensive beef is sliced up, then his hand.

The ultraviolence is relentless, graphic, bloody and sadistic, an attempt perhaps to compensate for the meagre plot and two-dimensional characters

The most sympathetic — if such a word can be applied to anyone in the series — character is Elliot, played by Sope Dirisu. Elliot is a hitman trying to escape the murderous clutches of the investors and get his ageing father out of the old-age home where he is essentially being held hostage.

Elliot is an inventive killer — in one extended fight scene in an Istanbul laundry he despatches his enormous assailant by strangling him with a cardigan. If only the series creators had shown similar creativity with the storyline and characters. At the end of the first episode, Alex Dumani, a financier and central character in Season
One, played by Paapa Essiedu, hurls himself off a high building for no apparent reason.

Perhaps he had seen the script for future episodes. London is indeed full of international gangs, its plushest streets for years awash with dirty money. The dark side of our capital today would certainly make a fine arena for an intelligent, complex television series, with nuanced characters facing ethical dilemmas — gangsters included. I live in hope.

The creators of Gangs of London could learn a lot from SAS Rogue Heroes. This fine new BBC drama is based on the book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, the first authorised history of the SAS — a story also told by Damien Lewis in his latest work SAS Brothers in Arms. Created by Steven Knight, who brought us Peaky Blinders, SAS Rogue Heroes is another story of violent rebels and outsiders, but these were good guys, fighting the Nazis.

The SAS was founded in 1941 in Cairo by David Stirling. He and his recruits, such as Paddy Mayne, disliked following orders, discipline and paperwork. They simply wanted to kill Germans. The idea was simple: why fight on the frontline when you can drive into the enemy’s territory, wreak havoc behind the lines, then escape?

The cinematography is evocative and often beautiful, a palette of colours shifting across the desert

The producers made great efforts to make the series as accurate as possible, liaising with surviving family members and the SAS Regimental Association. Connor Swindells plays David Stirling with Jack O’Connell as Paddy Mayne. Both seem to be enjoying themselves immensely, bringing a swashbuckling menace to their roles. Sofia Boutella adds a dash of glamour as Eve Mansour, a French intelligence operative with a direct line to General de Gaulle.

The cinematography is evocative and often beautiful, a palette of colours shifting across the desert. The action scenes are graphic but realistic. This was a war, after all. Much of the series was filmed in Morocco, which does a decent job of standing in for wartime Cairo and Libya.

Knight’s trademark mix of modern music welded onto a historical setting works even better here than in Peaky Blinders, bringing a manic, rousing energy as The Damned, The Clash, AC/DC thunder in the background. The boys really are on a highway to hell — and we can only cheer them on in this addictive, exhilarating series.

The Adulterer brings a change of pace. Hidden away on Walter Presents on Channel 4, this absorbing Dutch series, spread over three seasons, weaves together a slow, multi-layered story of forbidden love, treachery, sex and white-collar crime.

Their mutual attraction is instant. Both are married, but soon surrender to their coup de foudre

As closely observed as a Vermeer painting, it starts when Willem Steenhouwer, a dodgy lawyer, attends Iris Hoegaarde’s photographic exhibition. Their mutual attraction is instant. Both are married, but soon surrender to their coup de foudre.

The small cast is superb, most of all Sylvia Hoeks as Iris, who exudes emotions seemingly by magic — even when she says nothing we somehow know what she is feeling. Rifka Lodeizen, last seen in the Dutch series Fenix, gives a gripping performance as Steenhouwer’s wife and daughter of the crime lord for whom her husband works. All of the characters grow through each season as they face their own obstacles and dilemmas, their front and back stories looping back and forth.

Passion, it’s soon clear, comes at a high price, not just for the lovers, but also for those they love.