Theo James was 13 when Guy Ritchie’s breakthrough Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels came out in 1998, and working with the director has been something of an ambition. “That film was a cornerstone of my adolescence,” he says. The opportunity has come with The Gentlemen, a follow-up to Ritchie’s 2019 film of the same name. The premise for the spin-off Netflix series is the same, but with fresh faces and settings. James is excellent, but in a more understated way than in his role in The White Lotus. Here, he is the moral compass (in relative terms, at least initially) of a comic caper full of outsize performances. And although the premise is outlandish, Ritchie clearly knows the world of the British landed gentry and how to skewer it. “Guy loves both ends of the spectrum,” James says. “He’s really interested in the gentleman, the idea of what that means, both literally and existentially. But then he’s interested in the elevated underbelly of Britain at the same time.” —Tim Lewis