‘The Gentlemen’ Season 2 Producers Reveal How They Keep Topping Themselves on Murder

Guy Ritchie has built a career turning British criminal underworlds into stylish spectacle, and his Netflix series has proven that formula translates just as well to television as it does to film. Since ‘The Gentlemen‘ first introduced audiences to Theo James’s reluctant crime lord Eddie Horniman, the show has carved out a distinct identity by mixing aristocratic charm with brutal, campy violence.

That balancing act only gets trickier as the story expands. Season 2 sends Eddie and Kaya Scodelario’s Susie Glass beyond the English countryside and into new territory entirely, raising the stakes both narratively and in terms of tone.

Now, with the new season streaming on Netflix, the show’s producers are opening up about exactly how they keep pushing that tonal tightrope without losing what makes the series work. Writer and executive producer Matthew Read told Variety that they are always looking for new ways to murder people, capturing the show’s unusual blend of humor and horror in a single line.

That mindset extends far beyond just body count. Season 2 takes Eddie and Susie’s operation international, expanding onto what Read describes as the Mafia’s home turf in Italy. He explained to Variety that Italy felt like a very logical setting given the region’s association with both organized crime and glamor, pointing to that combination as the reasoning behind the new location.

Read has described the writers’ guiding philosophy as aiming for “reality plus 7%,” a phrase meant to capture the show’s heightened but still grounded tone. That balance between emotion, violence, and humor is something he and Ritchie discuss constantly during the writing process, encouraging each other to push ideas toward unexpected places while still keeping the story surprising.

Costume designer Loulou Bontempts noted that Season 2 notches up the glamour considerably, both at home and abroad, with Eddie and Susie’s wardrobes reflecting their growing wealth. The duke’s suits are now better cut, while Susie sports a Birkin bag, and the show’s props have expanded to include classic cars, fine wines, and even a tiger.

That tiger storyline, deliberately left vague to avoid spoiling it, exemplifies the show’s campy yet stylish tone. Production designer Martyn John revealed he found a steel gazebo on eBay for £20,000, adding sides and bars to transform it into the tiger’s cage, though the budget didn’t stretch to actually filming the tiger sequence on location in Italy, forcing the crew to find a suitable garden in the U.K. instead and dress it up with Italianate sculptures.

Bontempts also spoke about how deeply Ritchie’s own appreciation for British culture and history shapes the show’s aesthetic, describing him as his own version of Eddie Horniman. She noted that tailoring matters enormously to Ritchie, along with the broader history behind British aristocracy and quintessential country dressing, emphasizing that there really are rules governing how that world is portrayed.

Jonathan Glickman, CEO of Miramax and an executive producer on the series, pointed to a broader cultural appetite driving the show’s appeal, noting that Americans remain endlessly fascinated by the British regardless of whether they’ll admit it. That fascination extends beyond the crime plotting itself into the show’s obsession with aristocratic detail, from wardrobe to set design.

With the story now expanding beyond England’s borders and into new international territory, Season 2 appears determined to escalate every element that made the first season work, from the violence to the visual opulence surrounding it. Given how committed the producers seem to constantly topping themselves creatively, fans can likely expect the show’s blend of aristocratic charm and criminal chaos to only intensify from here.

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