Crime capers and double crosses galore in a double dose of Guy Ritchie’s most high-camp antics

Guy Ritchie has built an entire pop-cultural universe out of people behaving badly in very good clothes. Gangsters, aristocrats, dynastic crime families, double-crosses, improbable quantities of violence and the occasional corpse requiring discreet disposal: both The Gentlemen and MobLand return for second seasons firmly inside the director’s familiar territory. But beneath all the swagger and bloodshed, both are really family dramas — albeit families in which succession planning is more likely to involve a gun than a lawyer.

THE GENTLEMEN: THE CURSE OF INHERITANCE

Ritchie doesn’t much like answering questions as they’re asked. At the global press conference for the second season of The Gentlemen, he interrupted the moderator to recast a lengthy question about power, distinguishing between “actively desire” and “self-generate”.

“That’s a different thing,” he insisted. One “wants”, the other “achieves”. It’s a distinction that drives Season 2. “How does one ascend without self-imploding?” Ritchie asks. “How does one remain aggressive and ambitious and simultaneously not get decimated by their own ego?”

Eddie Horniman, the aristocrat-turned-reluctant-crime-lord played by Theo James, is trying to escape what Ritchie calls “the curse of inheritance”. Season 1 forced Eddie to stop being dependent on what he inherited; Season 2 lets him spread his wings.

Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), daughter of crime boss Bobby Glass, faces a similar dilemma: how much power does one inherit and how much does one create for oneself?

This season also moves some action from English country estates to the Italian lakes — partly thematic and, Ritchie admits, “partly an indulgence”.

“If you’re going to choose a substructure of nefarious villains, Italy is the place you’d pick.” Conveniently, Italy also has impoverished aristocrats, allowing The Gentlemen to export its delicious collision of old money and new crime. The trick, Ritchie says, is to make plots “plausible but simultaneously fantastic”. If a storyline is boring, it goes back to the drawing board until it becomes “suitably naughty and provocative”.

James describes Eddie’s transformation as a moral erosion, “a blackness that’s etching into his sense of self and his soul”, while comparing Eddie and Susie to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Ritchie is more succinct: “They’re both the biggest threat to each other ... and their biggest help.”

* The Gentlemen, Season 2 is on Netflix.

MOBLAND: MARRIAGE, MURDER AND DIRTY SOCKS

When Pierce Brosnan first prepared to play crime boss Conrad Harrigan, he arrived with an accent and a plan. Ritchie swiftly disposed of both.

“He said, ‘No. Be Irish. Go more Irish. Go mad’,” Brosnan recalls. And mad is about right. MobLand is Ritchie territory at its most enjoyable: violent, stylish, funny and populated by people you’d cross several roads to avoid.

Tom Hardy returns as fixer Harry Da Souza, but the great pleasure is Brosnan and Helen Mirren as Conrad and Maeve Harrigan, the husband-and-wife heads of a criminal family whose domestic arrangements are as dysfunctional as their business model.

There’s murder and mayhem, but also gangsters attending couples counselling, arguments about clothes on the floor and confusion over whether Conrad is the father or grandfather of a particular child. “They can go out and commit murder and mayhem,” Mirren says, “but when they’re home, they’re like an old married couple. Put your bloody socks away!”

Brosnan describes Conrad as “a volcano”; Mirren’s Maeve is “a snaky river” winding through everybody’s lives — and frequently manipulating them into spectacularly bad decisions. Season 2 finds the Harrigan empire fractured, with enemies circling and loyalties splintering.

For Brosnan, the role is a joyful demolition of the suave image forged through Remington Steele and James Bond. Conrad is ageing, impulsive and decidedly unpolished. “It’s liberating,” he says. “It’s wonderful to crack the mould of what you’ve created over many years.”

Mirren and Brosnan have now worked together three times in three years and their affection is obvious. “I’d pay a lot of money to work with Pierce for the rest of my life,” Mirren says.

Brosnan is equally devoted — at least in character. “She’s my oxygen,” he says of Maeve. “Without her, I’d be rudderless.”

Considering Maeve is perfectly capable of steering him directly towards murder, that may be the problem.

• MobLand Season 1 is showing on Netflix while Season 2 is available on DStv in South Africa. See TimesLIVE Lifestyle for expanded articles.