Irish Travellers in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentleman? I wonder why my expectations were so low…

Filmmaker Johnny P Collins, an Irish Traveller, reviews Guy Ritchie’s new Netflix series The Gentleman  – and is in for a surprise…

*Warning: This review contains spoilers

I sat down to watch Guy Ritchie’s The Gentleman series on Netflix with a sinking feeling in my stomach because I knew it would be featuring Irish Traveller characters in two of the episodes. I remembered back to when I was young, and the aggression and taunts I suffered after Snatch – also directed by Guy Ritchie -  and growing up with the resulting taunts and bullying related to Snatch’s Irish Traveller character Mickey O’Neil, played by actor Brad Pitt.

When going to an all-boy’s high school in Harlesden you must be ready for the odd fight, but to get your culture torn apart because a rather ridiculous impersonation of an Irish Traveller by Brad Pitt takes the biscuit. The taunts I had to endure included being asked if ‘I’ll fight them for their shoes’ - which I’m sure to this day is the wrong line from the movie anyway - and the dodgy Irish Traveller accent which wasn’t English, wasn’t Irish and most definitely wasn’t Traveller. It became quite a nightmare, and only added to the bullying I was already suffering thanks to CH4’s Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. So, my expectations for The Gentleman were pretty low, but I thought I would give it a watch - and I was in for a surprise.

The Gentleman is, of course, a more amped version of life, with spoiled drug fuelled posh kids who find themselves in a life of crime by way of a cockney family who made a killing in the weed business. Travellers have a brief appearance in the very first episode, and I saw some hope for the rest of the series when in a scene at an underground boxing club, Susie Glass, a cockney gangster played by the wonderful Kaya Scodelario, introduces the Traveller community who are among the spectators. So far, so good, and a lot of change from how Travellers were depicted in Snatch.

We finally get to meet the ‘Traveller community’ in a more substantial way in the episode ‘I have hundreds of Cousins’.  The scene starts off with a power cut that threatens the viability of the weed factory that the main characters are running in their stately home. They race outside, lead by the main star Eddie Halstead, played by Theo James, who spots that the generators which power the weed grows are getting stolen by thieves. One of the thieves’ cars is cut off and fails to escape and the reveal is that it is driven by a group of young Traveller children, known as the Wards. This is funny, as my mother is a Ward and I let out a little laugh because it looks like I have cousins in this amped up TV universe created by Guy Ritchie. The actors playing the children right away nailed the Traveller accent, and we finally could understand what the Irish Traveller characters were saying, which was an improvement from Snatch. Eddie decides to let the children go and deal with it in the morning.

Later in the episode, we see Eddie and Susie arriving at the Ward’s Traveller site and we get introduced to Car Keys Chris played by Irish Traveller actor, award winning director – and Traveller rights campaigner - John Connors. From the moment John Connors appears on screen you can feel his presence and impact on the way Travellers are portrayed on the show. We then get to meet the rest of the Ward family, including the head of the family JP, played by Irish actor Laurence O’Fuarrain, who gives an amazing portrayal of an Irish Traveller family man. We see this clash of worlds come together in a meeting, before they all have a party, and the Travellers move on to Eddie’s land with his permission.

We come to see an uneasy friendship growing between the two families and a beautiful scene in Eddie’s stables between Kellie Ann Ward, an Irish Traveller girl played by Leah McNamara, and Geoff Seacombe, Eddie’s gamekeeper and fixer played by Vinnie Jones. Kellie Ann is in the stables admiring a horse, when Geoff comes and becomes suspicious about why she is there. It turns out that Kellie Ann just wants to see the horse and Geoff asks if she would like to have a ride on it. We are then shown a powerful shot of Kellie Ann on the horse and then riding it around the training field. We then see Geoff and Lady Sabrina, played by Joely Richardson, talking about Kellie Ann and comparing her to their daughter, which to me felt like a way of breaking down the walls and giving us unity as fellow human beings.

The plot, as they say, thickens and we then see the characters joining up to ship drugs around the world, using Virgin Mary’s statues as decoys. The Travellers and the non- Travellers – and Guy Ritchie one would expect, are having fun, with the three Traveller lads having a laugh, which is something we hardly see in media.

But all things come to an end and we see a robbery happen, of which the Travellers become the main suspects, and this leads to Eddie and JP coming face to face in the trailer, but the identity of the perpetrators of the robbery remains unresolved. The Travellers depart in the morning with Eddie realising that maybe they were not guilty of the robbery after all, and he has a conversation with the rest of his gang about it – and this is an important scene. In it we see the characters being used as vessels for real-world discourse about Travellers, and hopefully it may be an eye opener for the viewers to see these conversations play out on screen. Eventually Eddie and Susie work out who the robber is and that they are from their gang and not the Traveller family and Eddie decides he must man up and give an apology to JP and the Ward Family.

Eddie arrives at the Ward's site and is welcomed by the family members, even through they are armed to the teeth. JP listens to Eddie while giving him some punches to see if Eddie is being true about what he says, but after a few hits JP realises that Eddie is genuinely contrite and asks, ‘What’s this gift you have for me Eddie?’. This is a beautiful way of showcasing how Travellers put out the hand of respect and allow stuff to be forgotten while repairing a friendship.

Eddie brings the real robber to the woods and JP and Car Keys Chris are also there. Then happens a really special moment which really caught my eye. Car Keys Chris – played by John Connors of course, uses Irish Traveller language - or cant - and hearing the same words that are spoken by me and my family on a Netflix show is exciting and just show-cases the importance of having an Irish Traveller cast as an Irish Traveller character. John Connors’ short time in the role of Chris was the most important part in the show, for me. I like to think he gave much needed advice to writers and producers in an industry that usually discounts learning anything about the Irish Traveller community. I see this show as a step into a better mediated version of who we are and how we will be represented on TV and Film, and I look forward to the future.

For the show overall, The Gentleman is a more amped version of life, enjoyable in every episode which, in turn, feels like its own mini movie.

10/10

By Johnny P Collins

Bio: Johnny P Collins is a former actor turned writer and film producer. He is founder of Durahan pictures, which is an independent film production company and based in London. Links are LinkedIn/instagram @johnnypcollins. Website www.durahanpictures.com

(Lead photo: Composite image using a Netflix promotional image and a portrait of John Connors taken by Shane Connors)