Amazon nabs Guy Ritchie's next crime thriller after MobLand breakout

You might have noticed that Guy Ritchie, Britain’s own purveyor of bullet-flecked banter and cockney crime, has had a rather odd stretch lately. Forget about his box office fortunes: Ritchie’s found a proper home on telly and streaming, where all the violence, plotting, and shouty Londoners actually draw a crowd. No surprise then, the big studios have clocked on and keep giving him the keys to the city — and the budget to blow bits of it up.

Guy Ritchie’s Crime TV Bender

Let’s just take stock for a second. Paramount+ released MobLand with Tom Hardy stomping about in the lead, and it went down a treat — so much so they ordered not one but two more series almost immediately. Then there’s Netflix, where Ritchie’s The Gentlemen elbowed its way to the very top of their global hit list, with viewers apparently lapping up every East End cliché and madcap plot twist.

And if you’re thinking it’s just crime and wisecracks, think again. Ritchie’s gone younger with Young Sherlock over at Prime Video. That one stars Hero Fiennes Tiffin and managed to hit top spot in 95 countries — not a typo — cleared 45 million viewers, and muscled its way into Prime’s all-time top ten originals. Not bad for a franchise origin story about a pouty schoolboy detective.

Back to His Roots: Capital

So, the latest pitch: Guy Ritchie’s nipping back to the mean streets of London with a new crime series, Capital. This one’s being set up by Amazon MGM Studios’ UK team, according to Deadline, and promises more of that gritty, underworld energy. The show’s only just entered development and, at this stage, it’s all ideas and scheming — not a cast list in sight. All we know is it’s set in present-day London, and it wants to poke around in the muck and money that slosh about in the capital’s shadows.

Here’s how it stacks up behind the scenes:

• Co-writing and Co-creating: Ritchie’s penned this one alongside Rob Williams — who you might know for BBC’s The Victim, the Netflix miniseries The Witness, and Apple TV’s Suspicion. Basically, the man’s CV is a whistle-stop tour of TV drama about dodgy people doing dodgy business.
• Directing and Producing: Ritchie’s running the show, calling the shots behind the camera, and producing as well.
• Production Team: Vice Studios is on the books, and Marc Resteghini’s outfit, Jack Tar Pictures, is attached too. Ivan Atkinson — if you’ve watched any Ritchie since The Gentlemen, you know the name — is sticking around to exec produce, along with Dhana Rivera Gilbert and Resteghini, who’ve all just come off Young Sherlock.

Capital is actually Ritchie’s second series for Amazon, rounding things out during a hectic time for their UK branch (they’re also working up a new version of The Girlfriend and dropping a Nordic thriller called Sarek). It’s all feeling very trend-chasing, but there’s no denying it: London crime pays — at least in TV land.

MobLand: Who’s Who?

Given how mobbed-up Ritchie’s recent projects have been, a refresher on MobLand makes sense. The set-up is simple but pure Ritchie: Two London crime clans, the Harrigans and the Stevensons, are slagging it out for control of, well, everything. Whatever peace there was is long gone, and the fallout is unmistakably bloody. Stuck in the middle is Harry Da Souza, a fixer with more street smarts than sense — and, inevitably, an absolute nightmare of a loyalty test. The casting is a bit of a flex:

• Tom Hardy as Harry Da Souza, navigating the chaos and generally smashing it
• Pierce Brosnan as Conrad Harrigan, the sort of crime boss who probably polishes brass knuckles between meetings
• Helen Mirren as Maeve Harrigan, serving as matriarch with equal parts menace and poise

MobLand’s first run hit it big for Paramount+, with back-to-back future seasons already in the pipeline. Ritchie’s still on board for those — meaning the man isn’t exactly short of work, or, frankly, London sets full of people swearing at each other.