The violent and crazy British TV show Samuel L Jackson fell in love with: “I liked it so much”
It’s entirely on-brand for one of Hollywood’s coolest, most charismatic, and self-aware actors to approach their stardom in a different way than their peers. Samuel L Jackson knows who he is, he knows what he does, and he knows what he wants, and he doesn’t care who knows it.
Plenty of performers claim they can’t stand watching themselves onscreen and distance themselves from a movie as soon as the cameras stop rolling, but not Jackson. He loves seeing himself work, and he doesn’t necessarily believe those who say publicly that they avoid themselves like the plague.
He was famously indignant when he lost out on an Academy Award for Pulp Fiction, but his desperation to win an Oscar has long been a thing of the past. Technically, he’s got an honorary gong for his contributions to cinema, but the veteran has made it clear that instead of prioritising awards-baiting pictures that stand the best chance of getting him on the podium, he focuses on how much fun he’ll have.
Nobody notches over 200 credits if they don’t love their job, and instead of caring about the quality of his overall filmography like his frequent collaborator, Quentin Tarantino, Jackson accepts most of the offers that come his way because he loves to work, regardless of whether he’s appearing in another franchise blockbuster or a straight-to-video genre flick that barely anyone will even see.
However, one thing he’s generally avoided is television. Even in the streaming age, where the biggest stars regularly bring their talents to the small screen, Jackson hasn’t shown much interest. Maybe it’s because he prefers making several features instead of spending months at a time on the set of a show, but outside of reprising his Marvel role as Nick Fury, 2022’s The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is the only other recurring live-action episodic role he’s played since 1992.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t watch TV, though, and one brutal British show caught his eye. In a conversation with Stephen Colbert, Jackson revealed he’d been bingeing “some wild and crazy things” before shouting out a crime drama that marries street-level gangster stories with balls-to-the-wall action sequences.
“I spent a lot of time watching Gangs of London,” he said. “I watched it a couple of times because I liked it so much.” Co-created by Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery, the nine-episode opening season more than lived up to its billing of ‘what would happen if the director of The Raid channelled the spirit of The Godfather?‘
Combining bone-crunching and bullet-riddled set pieces with the labyrinthine family drama that’s usually at the heart of any self-respecting crime epic, Jackson was so bowled over by the combination of sinew-snapping brawls and blood-splattered shootouts bolted onto a slow-burning attempt to seize control of the city’s criminal underworld that he felt compelled to watch it again in short order.
Did he feel the same about the second and third seasons? That remains unknown, but if he watched the first run twice, then it’s reasonable to assume he’s stuck with Gangs of London in its various guises.
