#in the show's first season even the protagonist's mom isn't scared of the bad guy

[cantsayidont]

SNATCH (2017–2018): Stylish but stupid series reimagining of the 2000 Guy Ritchie caper film — basically a loose amalgamation of SNATCH and Ritchie's earlier, better LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, with all-new characters — about a trio of young British hustlers (Luke Pasqualino, Rupert Grint, and Lucien Laviscount) who get in over their heads after they reluctantly graduate from petty scams to grand theft.

It's fitfully droll, but it feels like it's at once trying too hard and not trying hard enough, with its weak imitation of Ritchie's bombastic visual style and deadpan glibness (which even Ritchie found difficult to recapture in his later work) failing to compensate for a tiresome plot, slack pacing, ineffectual villains, some fleeting but misguided attempts to get serious (absolutely deadly with stuff like this), and an overall lack of inspiration. About all creator Alex De Rakoff manages to add to the Ritchie formula is women: Ritchie's early films have almost no significant female characters at all, but the show features several, including the scheming Lotti (Phoebe Dynevor, almost as insufferable as on BRIDGERTON) and slick junior gold dealer Chloe (Stephanie Leonidas, button-cute but unconvincing); they're underwritten and often marginalized in rather sexist ways, but at least the show is less of a sausage fest than Ritchie's early films. Alas, it's still full of "funny" racism and antisemitism, with the slur- and stereotype-heavy treatment of Irish Travellers as bad as or worse than the film.

CONTAINS LESBIANS? It's still awkwardly feeling out the idea that women can speak. VERDICT: Attractively packaged, but rather like two-day-old takeout — too stale and sludgy to be very appetizing, and its moment has clearly passed.