Gangs Of London: 8 Issues That Hold It Back From Greatness
5. The Protagonist Is The Least Interesting Character
No disrespect to Joe Cole - he's awesome in Gangs of London - but Sean Wallace just isn't one of the more interesting characters in this stacked ensemble.
Most of the smaller characters are more intriguing than the actual protagonist, since his personality and character moments are fairly predictable and hit the beats you'd expect. We've all seen the son of a criminal boss having to deal with the new job of running the organisation before.
To be honest, the Wallace family in general is a little less interesting than some of the other characters. Sean's younger brother Billy (Brian Vernel), who is a heroin addict, is better but Sean's mother, Marian, doesn't really work that well as a character and is too over-the-top. The other members of the family aren't terribly compelling either. The fact that the series' best episode (the aforementioned fifth one) doesn't actually feature any of them is quite telling.
Looking on the bright side, the other two main characters - Ed Dumani (the ever-brilliant Lucian Msamati) and his son Alex (Paapa Essiedu) - are much better and the program does have a very good, albeit over-stuffed, line-up of characters overall.