Peaky Blinders Fans Have 2 Months To Catch Up On This Excellent 2-Season Crime Series Before Season 3 Starts

February 2, 2025

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With a Peaky Blinders movie still several months ago, fans of British gangster shows can pass the time by checking out Gangs of London. For those who haven’t already heard, Gangs of London is a brutal modern-day crime drama set on the streets of Britain’s capital. Leading its cast is Joe Cole, the young actor who made his name as John Shelby in Peaky Blinders before exiting the show in season 4. Here it’s Cole’s character Sean Wallace who calls the shots, though, heading up a criminal organization seeking to maintain its position as the most powerful gang in London.

With confirmation that Gangs of London’s third season will be released on Sky Atlantic in March, viewers have two months to get up to speed by watching the 17 episodes to have been released in its first and second seasons. Even those who’ve seen the show before might want to reacquaint themselves, as Gangs of London’s labyrinthine plot threads can be difficult to keep up with if forgotten, much like those of Peaky Blinders.

Gangs Of London Is Perfect If You’re Missing Peaky Blinders

It’s Like A Modern Update Of The Stephen Knight Series

While Gangs of London is a similar show to Stephen Knight’s most celebrated series, its world is somewhat different from the inter-war slums and stately homes of Peaky Blinders. A century on from the days that Shelby Company Ltd controlled the streets of Small Heath in Birmingham, it’s Albanian, Georgian and Algerian mobsters who present the biggest challenge to the Wallace Organization in London. Joe Cole has swapped his working man’s flatcap for a leather jacket, and his razorblade for a semi-automatic 9mm pistol.

Sky Atlantic’s original Gangs of London series, starring Joe Cole, opened to positive reviews; here’s a look at the show’s 10 best ranked characters.

Nevertheless, many of the show’s scenes and storylines will satisfy those looking for their fix of Shelby-style gang violence. There are pub brawls, street shootouts and guerrilla wars on the streets of Kurdistan. Oh, and plenty of heads get smashed into bloody pulps, of course. All the while, Sean Wallace attempts to maintain his supremacy over London’s ganglands and expand his drugs business, in the face of police infiltration and attacks from rival gangs. Season 2 leaves his kingpin status (literally) hanging by a thread, in a cliffhanger not to be missed before season 3’s premiere.

Gangs Of London Is Even More Violent Than Peaky Blinders

Gangsters Can Do Even More Damage With Today’s Weapons

It’s worth noting that even though Peaky Blinders has its fair share of bloody murder and hard-hitting fight scenes, Gangs of London’s best action sequences actually take things up a notch. It has the advantage of modern-day weapons at its disposal, and it isn’t afraid to use them. There are plenty of point-blank killings with fast-action handguns, machine gun exchanges, and large-scale explosions. There’s also room for some good old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat, a meat cleaver attack, and a cold-blooded poisoning. Fight scenes invariably end with at least one character soaking in a pool of their own blood.

So, there’s no need to rewatch Peaky Blinders for a fourth time in search of gang violence. Seasons 1 and 2 of Gangs of London is on AMC+ in the US, and Sky Atlantic in the UK, with the most ferocious gang warfare on TV, dialed up to 11 in episode after episode.