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Bish, bosh, wallop. Yes, Guy Ritchie has returned to his well-heeled, loose-moral world of English toffs, cockney geezers and shady characters with the second season of The Gentlemen. Spinning off from his own 2020 comedy-thriller, the Netflix crime comedy is a story of aristocrats slumming it with society’s violent and undesirable.
It’s all drug labs and black Labs as Theo James’s army officer, Edward ‘Eddie’ Horniman, inherits a 15,000 acre estate called Halstead Manor only to find that it comes with its own subterranean weed farm and drugs baron. That man, Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone), is in prison, leaving his equally dangerous daughter, Susie (Kaya Scodelario), calling the shots. Two heirs, zero graces, in other words.
Much like last season, The Gentlemen continues inviting viewers to its grandiose mansions and country estate. But this time around, Eddie and co also venture beyond to the sun-soaked Italian lakeside. There’s even a brief detour to Peru.
Production designer Martyn John shares how – and where – the second part of Guy Ritchie’s crime comedy came together.
Badminton House, Gloucestershire
Halstead Manor, the ancestral seat inherited by James’s Eddie Halstead, was filmed at Gloucestershire’s Badminton House, actually the ancestral home of the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort – and it’s back for season 2. The penultimate episode features the manor grounds in night time as Vinnie Jones’s gamekeeper Geoff finds himself in a Die Hard-like scenario.
Lake Maggiore and Pallanza, Italy
With Eddie dealing with the Mafia and investing in some marijuana farms in Italy, the second half of season 2 takes him to Lake Maggiore. With characters sipping Aperol on boats, the sun-splashed Italian locations add more colour to the show’s rural English palette.
Italy’s second largest lake, Maggiore borders Switzerland. Filming commenced around a pier constructed around the lakeside villa Rusconi Clerici. The neoclassical property is dotted with gardened terraces that descend towards the lake, making it the perfect landing spot for Eddie and other characters to stylishly arrive on Riva motorboats.
The Grand Majestic Hotel hosts pivotal season 2 moments, including a wedding party and some revealing conversations between the characters.
Pallanza’s Catholic parish church Chiesa di San Leonardo hosts a season 2 wedding, with John’s production design team decking up the church’s medieval complex and Renaissance-style façade with flowers and olive trees.
‘We went to Italy to look for the villa, but we [also] had to find a church, a village, a town square and a hotel within the same zone,’ says John. ‘We only had two weeks to film in Italy, so it was paramount that I found everything in one place.’
With a lot of the pre-wedding chatter unfurling inside hotel rooms, it made sense to utilise the Grand Majestic Hotel’s interiors. However, a limited filming schedule in Italy prompted John to go back to England and adorn some rooms in a country house outside of Uxbridge to match with the Italian hotel.
Beyond Italy, Scodelario’s Susie Glass can also be seen striking a deal with a cartel in a forested part of Peru. West London locations and a country estate in Guildford doubling up as the Latin American country.
Guy Ritchie’s private airfield, Wiltshire and White Waltham Airfield, Berkshire
Aside from their Italian and Peruvian affairs, Eddie and Susie’s cannabis empire is also expanding on home turf. Look out for narcotics containers inside airfield hangars in season 2. To achieve these cramped interiors of the dim-lit farms and the expansive airfield exteriors, John went for a mix-and-match approach.
‘The weed farm is a studio set which we built with containers,’ he says. ‘The exterior of those containers was in a hangar at the White Waltham airfield.’ White Waltham airfield has a lively history of its own. It used to host acid house raves and featured in My Week with Marilyn and several episodes of Taskmaster.
The airfield where the airplanes land is Guy Ritchie’s own private airfield in Wiltshire. ‘It’s all about… clever cuts,’ says John.
As for the class B plants themselves, the marijuana leaves were printed in China on silk, then flown to London where John’s prop team crafted marijuana plants in a warehouse in Brixton. ‘When we were loading them onto the truck to take them to the set, to dress the set, somebody saw the warehouse full of marijuana plants,’ remembers John. ‘So we had a real problem because they thought it was real.’
Ashcombe House, Wiltshire
The airfield isn’t the only Ritchie-owned Wiltshire property in the second season. The director’s sprawling 1134-acre estate and its lake serve as the setting for Eddie’s hunting party in the opening episode. Ashcombe House is a Georgian manor purchased by Ritchie and his then-wife Madonna in 2001. Ritchie retained the property as a part of their divorce settlement and later created a sporting lake which you can spot in The Gentlemen.
Filming in summer proved to be tricky, though, as most birds are being bred at this time for hunting in autumn. Some convincing CGI birds did the trick while the actors were still dressed up in winter tweeds for continuity, battling the summer heat at the time.
Swakeleys House, Ickenham
After indulging in drug-fuelled benders and shooting down gangsters in a chicken costume, Eddie’s unhinged older brother Frederick ‘Freddie’ Horniman (Daniel Ings) is laying low at St. Bartholomew’s rehab centre. The real location is white-walled 17th-century mansion Swakeleys House.
Finding inspiration for his set dressing in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, John initially feared that filming would be difficult because ‘white rooms are always illuminated and you can’t change the light’. But the result is an almost unnerving shade of white that envelops Freddie’s downtime in season 2.
Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury
Eddie has a run-in at Salisbury Cathedral with season 1’s charming villain Stanley Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito). Johnston delves deep into his notions of royal power and lineages, aptly stopping to have a look at one of the four surviving copies of the 1215 royal charter Magna Carta that remains on permanent display inside the Gothic cathedral.
Who stars in The Gentlemen season 2?
Joining season 2 is Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) as a dodgy aristocrat who helps to curry parliamentary favour for Eddie’s business, Michele Morrone (365 Days) as a Mafia footsoldier envious of Eddie’s rise, and Benedetta Porcaroli (Immaculate) as an Italian contessa with Mob ties. Boxer Chris Eubank Jr also has a guest appearance as a fighter working alongside Susie Glass. Love Island host Maya Jama plays an ambitious socialite with connections in the Middle East.
Will The Gentlemen get a season 3?
Yes, Netflix already green lit a third season.
The Gentlemen season 2 is streaming on Netflix now.
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