Gangs Of London: 8 Issues That Hold It Back From Greatness
3. It's Too Cluttered And Convoluted
Gangs of London is a hard show to follow. There are so many different plot-lines and characters that you'll often be having to remind yourself of different narrative developments and trying to remember who's who.
It would've been better to streamline things down quite a bit here, since it does just get a bit much to understand at times and it's ultimately quite difficult to work out what the big conspiracy that led to Finn Wallace (Colm Meaney), Sean's father and the previous leader of the gang being assassinated actually was.
There are also far, far too many characters to keep track of and many of the really interesting ones don't appear enough.
Aside from the aforementioned examples, Lale (Narges Rashidi), a Kurdish PKK militant, is one of the most intriguing characters but she isn't as prominent as she should've been, while characters such as Elliot Finch's father (Jude Akuwudike) and police supervisor Vicky (Jing Lusi) largely fade into the background.
The excellent David Bradley was also wasted playing a 'nothing' role in the first episode. The ambition of this show is very admirable, but a simple story and smaller cast wouldn't have hurt.