by Mike Hilty, Contributing Writer
I’ve seen the movie Sexy Beast a few times. It came out around the same time that Guy Richie came onto the scene, making the London underground crime scene such an interesting setting for a film. In Sexy Beast, Jonathan Glazer directs a tense and incredible character study about someone who gets sucked back into the crime world that he’s so desperate to try and escape. When I originally wanted to review the TV show, I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection between this and the series. So after I was done with the series, I rewatched the movie to see if the show enhanced my enjoyment of the TV series.
The results were complicated.
Sexy Beast the series is a prequel that shows partners, Gal Dove (James McArdle) and Don Logan (Emun Elliott), as they work their way to the big leagues in the criminal underworld. As a well-regarded safe cracker, Gal meets Deedee Harrison (Sarah Greene) and his whole world turns upside down. At the same time, Gal and Don get involved with the McGraw family and aspiring kingpin, Teddy Bass (Stephen Moyer), and quickly find out they are way in over their heads.
I appreciate the little details that connect Sexy Beast the series to the original movie. In addition to the characters, the beginnings are identical, with Gal soaking up the sun before being interrupted. Good chunks of both the movie and the series take place in Spain, and there are some specific references to rabbits. We also see how Deedee tragically gets a scar. These little details help shape how the events in the past set up the future. I’m normally not someone who likes Easter eggs, but I did here.
The three main characters in Sexy Beast the series are all in the original movie. Seeing how we get from one to the next provides some helpful development for these characters. Gal and Teddy get a lot of backstory that helps us understand why they are the way they are. For instance, Gal is loyal to a fault to his family. His parents are in tough situations, and he makes just enough for them to be taken care of. We also get a look at some of the seedier parts of Gal’s personality, like his womanizing ways before he met Deedee and how horrible he treats some people in his crew. This helps the audience see that despite being a nice guy, Gal is still a criminal, and as he moves up in the crime world, we could hopefully see more development.
Teddy is a strong character to follow from the movie, with Ian McShane embodying everything dynamic in that role. But his limited time on screen provides zero clues about how he became a notorious criminal. Throughout the series, though, Teddy establishes himself as a ruthless and smart criminal. He has some of the most uncomfortable moments in the Sexy Beast series; however, these scenes help us understand how he became a strong presence in the criminal underworld. What he has to arrive at who he ultimately becomes broke my heart a little. It is also a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, where he becomes something so much more sinister than the person he is in the movie.
Don Logan is perhaps the biggest letdown of the main group when it comes to character development. We see a great deal of the abuse Don takes at the hands of Cecilia (Tamsen Greig). It doesn’t help that Elliott, as a performer, struggles to fill the shoes left behind by Academy Award-nominated Ben Kingsley. The trouble we run into with Don is that his story is incomplete in two ways: We don’t get a sense of how he becomes the big shot he is in the movie, and we have a potential setup for a conflict between him and Gal.
Deedee, in particular, is the beneficiary of additional backstory, because she largely takes a backseat in the original film. By seeing more of her story, we appreciate all she goes through prior to the film. From watching her struggle to break free of the company she works for in the porn industry, to seeing her toxic relationship before she meets Gal, Deedee has a story beyond being connected to Gal.
Another character who isn’t lucky enough to get more backstory is Aitch (John Dagleish). In the movie, he’s a loyal sidekick to Gal, but in the show, he’s a rising star connected to Gal and Don. Aitch doesn’t get a lot to do in the series, which is frustrating, because he has some prominent scenes in the movie as someone who Gal can depend on, and who could be considered his only friend other than Deedee.
Because this is a prequel, the stakes felt incredibly low to where the story, meaning the job that Gal and his team have to perform, fall a little flat. Unfortunately, this is a common prequel problem, one that I don’t know how to resolve. How can you make stakes for a character where you know their end game?
The series introduces a lot of intricacies in the London crime world, and it can be hard to keep track of everything. I enjoy the heist plot a lot and I wish we had more of it. But there’s so much other drama when it comes to Teddy Bass versus the McGraw family that it becomes frustrating that the show takes away time from the heist to show us underworld bureaucracy.
Something I struggled with a lot in the show is how it takes the Don Logan we have now to the Don Logan we see in the movie. The gap between the end of the series and the beginning of the movie is bigger than originally anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, I like the writing and the cinematography a lot, but it’s hard to see how a prequel season helps anyone out.
I initially gave Sexy Beast a higher rating, but after I watched the movie again, I lowered my score a little bit. The show could eventually have been great, but there are more problems that I found than elements I enjoyed. The prequel issue pops up again, which drives the stakes so low that it’s hard to care. Moreover, I still can’t reconcile the gap of where we are at the end of the series to the beginning of the movie. If Paramount+ gives this another chance, I hope that we will get closer to the movie, instead of steering further away for the sake of making an inferior version.
Rating: It Was Just Okay
Sexy Beast is currently streaming on Paramount+
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