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Reviews
Gangsters (1976)
First of the Brit gangster series
I was 15 when this series first ran and it was very much a leader in its genre. Today we're used to the Brit gangster movies like Lock Stock, and Snatch, but back in 1975 I'd never seen anything like Gangsters before.
For one thing the characters are all "real people". In shows like The Saint, and the Avengers, the leading roles were very much 2-dimensional. You could never have an ordinary person as "perfect" as Simon Templar or John Steed. But Maurice Colburn's character was flawed. He didn't always win, and his girlfriend is a reformed junkie who ends up with some nasty things happening to her. Also the violence in the show, although restrained by today's standards, was a heck of a lot grittier than the kind of clinical efforts of earlier shows.
This was also one of the first shows I remember in which drugs played a key part.
It's been 30 years since I saw the series - for some reason it hasn't been repeated on UK TV as far as I remember.