One of the pithiest pieces of dialogue of Steven Spielberg’s entire oeuvre is Jeff Goldblum’s remark in Jurassic Park that the dinosaur-resurrecting scientists “were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”. This sentiment also applies to Paramount+’s Sexy Beast – a late-in-life prequel to the 2000 movie. It is not the how, but the why that should have been given consideration.
The series is set eight years before Jonathan Glazer’s Ray Winstone-starring thriller – a beloved film and university hall poster for many a geriatric millennial. It’s a film that holds up remarkably well, and is a far more accomplished piece of cinema than the faint memory of Winstone sunbathing in a pair of orange budgie smugglers would suggest. The film sees his anti-hero, Gal, happily retired in the Costa del Sol with his beloved wife Deedee, only to be roped in for one last job by his volatile former partner Don, played with jittery, simmering menace by Ben Kingsley.
For the television follow-up, we journey back to 1992 to see how Gal (now James McArdle) ended up at that point. But it begins with a familiar sight – McArdle getting a tan in a pair of tiny tangerine shorts atop a London tower block. We follow him and his pal Don (Emun Elliott) as low-level thieves who ascend the ranks, via the unscrupulous mob boss Teddy (here True Blood’s Stephen Moyer, in the film Ian McShane). He hires them for a series of increasingly elaborate heists to retrieve everything from gold coins to pocket-sized antiquities.
As is the way with prequels, much of how this turns out is a fait accompli. We know who will survive the eight episodes, we know that despite the young Gal’s engagement to the nice but dim Marjorie, him and young Deedee (Sarah Greene) are fated to be together.
What the show does remember is that Deedee is both the heart and the wisest character of Sexy Beast. The love story between her and Gal is at the core of the film (in which she is played by Amanda Redman), with Winstone sincerely uttering lines such as: “I love you like a rose loves rain water.” In the prequel, Deedee is a young porn star, starting to get more agency within her work, but unable to resist the charms of the young thief. Hers is far and away the most intriguing plot line, and Greene’s performance the most striking. Hers is the only character who could slip seamlessly into Glazer’s previous vision, which was far more surreal and tender than this bare-bones plot. Here, stereotypical London gangster shenanigans come to the screen with little weight behind anyone’s motives, and mob bosses such as Teddy simply growl that in these troubled times of war, “our country needs our lunatics”.
Like the crimes, the dynamics of the relationship between Gal and Don aren’t nearly as complex as that brought to the screen by Winstone and Kingsley. There’s a dusty void of chemistry between the two actors, and their characters’ tenuous allegiance bends and then breaks when small fish Gal and Don start work for the maniacal, violent criminal overlord Teddy, who dangles rewards for jobs well done in front of them, expecting the kind of loyalty he’d get from labrador puppies.
Violence in this world also often comes with a hint of sexual perversion. Teddy is not content to knock a foe’s teeth out and sexually violate him, but adds “What keeps me hard is the thought of keeping you alive as I squeeze you into a coffin with your dear old daddy” to further establish that Gal, who loves looking into Deedee’s “dancing brown eyes”, is not like these other angry weirdos.
While the heists, pummelling and kinky threats are not necessarily unenjoyable, the whole series – Deedee and Gal’s love story aside – is pretty one-note, with Gal reduced to “affable blond fella” and the majority of the cast doing a version of panto villain. The scenery-chewing evilness works best in the casting against type of Tamsin Greig, who plays Don’s even more despicable older sister, Cecilia, all botched Princess Diana hair do, incestual undertones and chain-smoking malice.
While Greig seems to be having a whale of a time playing a remorseless monster, everyone else’s enthusiasm feels as though it is waning by the penultimate episode – which is largely concerned with the stag do before Gal and Marjorie’s ill-fated wedding. There are a few more beatings to be delivered and bits and bobs to steal, but it’s unclear what any of this adds for fans of the film, or the uninitiated. Particularly given that the latter could, in the same amount of time, watch Glazer’s 85-minute masterpiece, follow it up with the rest of his filmography and still have a couple of hours to spare.
The show zips along perfectly pleasantly, and no one involved is embarrassing themselves – or jeopardising Glazer’s present Oscar campaign for The Zone of Interest. But following the arguably more misogynistic TV adaptation of Fatal Attraction, a dour True Lies and now this paint-by-numbers London underworld fare, those creating small-screen versions of fondly remembered films need to stop to think what purpose these projects serve. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
• Sexy Beast is on Paramount+ now
