This Guy-Ritchie-directed gangland drama is deathly dull. It’s a charm-free watch with awful characters and humour so genital-based that at one point Helen Mirren yells a penis joke at a sausage

MobLand. It sounds like a regional nightclub. Or a boyband. But it’s not. It’s a Paramount+ crime drama starring Pierce Brosnan as an Irishman unable to speak in a convincing Irish accent. This is his tragedy. His cross to bear. And now it’s ours, too, because MobLand is back for a second series, with Brosnan – as the veteran gang boss Conrad Harrigan – once again battling other gang bosses while attempting to say things like “Oi love ye loike a tramp loves paraffin” without his vowels shrivelling into tiny raisins of pseudo-Hibernian shame. Does he succeed? Oi tink not! But there are bigger problems afoot, to be sure.

Created by Ronan “Top Boy” Bennett and directed by Guy Ritchie, the first series of the London-set MobLand (feel the width of that capitalised L!) was a sustained roar of nothing much; a rumble through every possible modern gangster drama cliche in the Every Modern Gangster Drama Cliche book. You know the sort of thing: car chases through suspiciously empty city streets; convoluted drug deals with mumbling eastern Europeans; tiny-eyed endomorphs in flat caps bellowing “Oi” in slow motion as they hurtle through the air to the strains of something unconscionable by Kasabian.

The ruthless female characters of The Gentlemen, Beef and Peaky Blinders bring new depth to the evil matriarch stereotype

Television loves a gangster story – and apparently so does the Duchess of Sussex. This week, Netflix’s The Gentlemen – Guy Ritchie’s latest addition to the gangster canon, which stars Theo James as a distractingly handsome aristocrat who becomes embroiled in the world of organized crime – returns for its second season. And in August, the show hit the headlines after rumors that Meghan was reportedly in early talks to join its third season when she and Prince Harry made their highly unexpected return to the UK.

At first, Meghan’s potential role seemed like a random pivot for the former Suits star, who now seems far more at home holding a jar of her Montecito-made jam than brandishing a gun. But really, these casting rumours are indicative of a wider shift in the traditionally machismo-fueled gangster genre, where it’s now more common to see women stealing the spotlight – and calling the shots.

Guy Ritchie’s crime caper is back with the usual hijinks, swearing and men shaking their fists. But its ridiculousness is strangely comforting – and Theo James’s beefcake Eddie is so bland that he is fascinating to observe

He lives in a house, a very big house in the country. He has pectorals the size of Bentleys and wears plus-fours so voluminous they could accommodate his fleet of gundogs and still provide room for snarling groundskeeper Geoff (“I would do anyfink for you an’ this famlee”). And yet! Edward “Eddie” Horniman, 13th Duke of Halstead (Theo James), is sad. And aggrieved. A moment’s silence, please, as this powerful hunk pontificates on the unbearable lightness of being the millionaire protagonist in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen.

“Four hundred years ago, this estate spread out as far as the eye could see,” he tells Geoff (Vinnie Jones) as the camera swoops over his verdant playpen, a lavish patchwork of abundant hedges and cap-doffing deer. “But it’s been diminished. Year after year. Generation after generation. First came the apologies, then came the shame, then came the contraction. I want it back, Geoff,” he growls, hexagonal jaw stiff with emotion. “I want it all back!”

Duchess of Sussex was believed to have been under consideration for season three of Guy Ritchie’s crime caper

The Duchess of Sussex’s casting in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen has been withdrawn, it was reported.

Tina Brown, the former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, wrote on Saturday: “I learned this morning that the casting of Meghan Markle in season 3 of Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series The Gentlemen has been withdrawn. The backlash in the UK was so intense, it became untenable to go forward.”

The Duchess of Sussex is said to be discussing a return to acting in the third season of Netflix’s hit crime series

The Duchess of Sussex is in talks to make her acting return in Netflix’s hit series The Gentlemen.

According to Variety, Meghan is in discussions to join the third season, which has yet to receive an official greenlight. The Gentlemen is a spin-off from the 2019 crime comedy of the same name with Guy Ritchie acting as creator of both.

The last heistmeister of ‘the largest burglary in English history’ oozes charisma as he tells his wild tale. Even his contempt for his accomplices is impressive

It is a truth I feel should be universally acknowledged – that a headline-grabbing crime, which still has one of its charismatic perpetrators alive and willing to talk about it now on camera, must have a documentary dedicated to it.

The last one was the three-part miniseries The Diamond Heist, from Guy Ritchie’s production company, about the Millenium Dome Robbery (although the best line came not from the villains but from one of the laconic police officers responsible for trying to track down members of the gang as they put their plan together. They got a lead on one when he went back to the venue without his daughter. “No one goes to the Millenium Dome twice.” This is what I pay my taxes for.)

Hatton Garden: The Great Diamond Heist is on Channel 4.

Loud, brash and blokey, it’s not nearly as fresh as the director’s last take on the sleuth 15 years ago. There are flashes of fun, even if Moriarty blows the lead off the screen

Guy Ritchie has made a new TV series about Sherlock Holmes and the long and the short of it is … hmm. But first, some questions. Does the eight-part mystery-drama include scenes in which flippant young men in flat caps shout “Oi” while hurtling through the air in slow motion? It does. Are there bare knuckle biff-ups during which bulbous cockneys cheer on other bulbous cockneys and Irish folk music diddles frantically in the background? There are. Might there also be bits where everything suddenly goes really fast for no reason, effortful banter between bruisers in tweed trousers, blundering rozzers and the sense that while female characters are welcome to contribute to the plot, they are very much excluded from being any sort of fun?

Well, duh. Or rather, strike a light an’ cor blimey, guv’nor, you’ve got this Guy Ritchie geezer bang to rights. For here is Young Sherlock, a very large and very loud new series for Prime Video that was “executive produced and directed by the man who made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, then that one with Brad Pitt, then some other films that weren’t either of those ones apparently” written through it like a stick of bleedin’ rock.