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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
17
Mixed:
9
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Apr 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
AMC’s newest British crime drama is replete with violence, slathering on the carnage like so much frosting on a cake, but its excess is intentional and its pacing exquisite. ... I love it. I cannot get enough of this show. ... Gangs of London isn’t for the squeamish, but its baroquely complex universe can be a thrilling one to visit.
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The PlaylistOct 5, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Given a massive cast and considerably more time for building plot, Evans is able to extend that dynamic and see it through across multiple arcs without shortchanging any of them. ... Every fight scene here has clear movement, clear stakes, and a clear human element at play. ... It’s one of the best accomplishments of his career to date.
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The TelegraphJan 27, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Sure, the script clunks portentously in places but nobody comes to Gangs of London for subtlety. Dialogue is often merely a place-holder, moving the plot along until the next operatic set piece arrives. ... Gangs of London is back with a bang. Not to mention a crunch and a squelch.
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Radio TimesOct 20, 2022
Sep 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Older viewers will be taken aback, but perhaps fascinated as well—the reaction to on-screen violence is, after all, often knee-jerk and disregards the fact that mayhem can be entertaining and/or cathartic and when done well, as it is here, is an art form unto itself. ... It takes its story very seriously, “Gangs” does, but it’s also audacious enough to engender good will and enigmatic enough to keep one engrossed.
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The TimesJun 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Director Gareth Evans has succeeded in melding the tropes of martial arts, video games and slasher films so that one feels detached from the brutality. The action is balletic more than it is horrific; the blows don't land as emotionally. ... The cast is excellent (so nice to see Catelyn Stark OK, Michelle Fairley as the gangster's wife) and I could watch Lucian Msamati in anything.
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Mar 29, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Gangs of London,” has an uneasy path to walk but it’s mostly successful at navigating it. On the one hand, it’s an absorbing drama about a wealthy, viciously unethical family on the cusp of generational change. (Think “The Godfather” or “Succession.”) Now, combine that with enough lethal firepower and martial-arts mano a mano to give Jason Statham pause, and you’ve got “Gangs of London.”
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Apr 2, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Spectacular, cartoonish ultraviolence becomes less of a selling point as the series goes on. Its replacement — a parable of toxic masculinity about men making the most savage possible choice to avoid appearing “soft’ in front of other men — becomes tedious. But it’s worth waiting out Gangs’ less distinguished bits to get to those Evans setpieces.
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The GuardianMar 20, 2025
Season 3 Review:
Between the jolts of carnage it can be hard to keep all the motivations straight across eight episodes, especially if your memories of what everyone was up to in the first season – which debuted in 2020 – are hazy. So it is unlikely to win over anyone who has found its previous glamorisation of theatrical gangsters and extreme violence distasteful. Yet in full flight Gangs of London can still be nerve-shredding TV.
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The TelegraphMar 20, 2025
Season 3 Review:
The high-octane series starts at a million miles per hour but flags towards the end of its eight episodes. Betrayals and double-crossings grow repetitive. Flashbacks become confusing. Characters are constantly ordering hits on one another and placing bounty on rivals’ heads. The ending is underwhelming.
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Apr 1, 2021The IndependentJun 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The show does well to quickly build its own mythology, and there are interesting elements sprinkled throughout related to class, race and poor, Sixties immigrants raising well-educated sons. ... You just wish Gangs of London would settle on a consistent mood: either lean into the nonsense, or quit pretending you’re The Wire. As it stands, you probably wouldn’t want to join this particular gang.
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Dec 8, 2020
Season 1 Review:
After a promising first half hour, the writers basically give up any pretense of constructing a good narrative, and the show slips into sanguinary dreck. The really offensive part here isn’t the violence. It doesn’t take long to understand that rather than using it to illustrate a point about the nature of the world, as the truly great shows do, the creators just seem to get off on the ugly depictions.
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The TimesMar 21, 2025
The GuardianOct 20, 2022
Season 2 Review:
The violence is on steroids; it’s as if the director and the writer hatched a plot after watching Steven Knight’s Peaky Blinders and Ronan Bennett’s Top Boy. ... There are passages of inaction while, you’d think, minions hose down the scenery. But they all involve shifty blokes trading gangland bants so improbable that even Guy Ritchie would doubt them.
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The TelegraphJun 29, 2020
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