Before The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie made a forgotten TV series

Let me take you back to the late nineties—Guy Ritchie had just exploded onto the scene with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and British crime films suddenly weren't all about EastEnders blokes arguing in the Queen Vic. Fast-forward a bit, and Ritchie is probably best known for reinventing the geezer flick with that style of his. But while everyone's got the films at their fingertips, hardly anyone remembers—or even knows about—his first ever TV attempt: a one-season wonder with the straightforward title: Lock, Stock...

Lock, Stock... first aired on Channel 4 in the UK, kicking off with a feature-length pilot in May 2000 followed by six more episodes over the summer.

From Cinema to Channel 4

If you're under the impression that The Gentlemen on Netflix marked Ritchie's TV debut, you've missed a trick. Two whole decades earlier, Lock, Stock... quietly slipped onto Channel 4, riding the coattails of the film's cult status but definitely trying to carve out its own path. Now, it's not so much a sequel as it is a spinoff in spirit—think the same sort of London underworld, but with new faces making fresh mistakes.

The main four lads—Moon (Daniel Caltagirone), Jamie (Scott Maslen), Bacon (Shaun Parkes), and Lee (Del Synnott)—run The Lock, a pub where schemes are always on tap, and luck is in even shorter supply than the beer. Their dodgy ventures regularly spiral out of control, including their accidental pinch of a van loaded with guns, which very nearly kicks off a turf war none of them bargained for. Fans of Ritchie's usual chaos will feel right at home.

Instant Reactions and Long-Term Legacy

Not everyone was sold at the time. The Guardian had their knives out, saying the show fell short of the film's plot cleverness and couldn't quite step out of its cinematic shadow. Worth remembering, by the way, that Ritchie's career was still brand new then—Snatch hadn't come out yet, so he was risking it by moving onto telly at all. The studios weren't stacking major chips on his name just yet.

Still, in the years since, there's been a bit of a reappraisal of Lock, Stock.... Sure, it only lasted a season, but among those who sniff it out nowadays it's earned the label of a 'forgotten Gem'. It's absolutely of its era—baggy jeans, terrible haircuts—but you can see flashes of Ritchie's future hits buried in there: the sharp-tongued banter, frantic plotting, and trade-off between violence and slapstick that would go on to shape films like The Gentlemen.

• The show's main cast: Daniel Caltagirone (Moon), Scott Maslen (Jamie), Shaun Parkes (Bacon), Del Synnott (Lee)
• Not a direct sequel—more a side-step into similar territory, with plenty of allusions to the original film
• First aired May-July 2000 on Channel 4 (UK only, no US release at the time)
• Seven episodes total, starting with a feature-length pilot
• Still not exactly easy to stream, but you can buy the series digitally if you know where to look

If you ever do manage to track down the episodes, you'll see Ritchie doing what he’s always done best: a cheeky, chaotic tour of the criminal East End—now just with a slightly smaller budget and a lot more telly pacing thrown in.