Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sexy Beast’ On Paramount+, A Prequel To The 2000 Film That Shows Gal And Don’s Origins As Big-Time Thieves

In this era where streaming services are strip-mining their parent studios’ intellectual property in a desperate attempt to generate content, we knew it would finally get to the time where we would be getting sequels or prequels or remakes of movies that were only minor hits. That era has arrived with a prequel series to the 2000 film Sexy Beast, which is mostly remembered for a fine performance by Sir Ben Kingsley but little else.

SEXY BEAST: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” plays, a man runs his hands through the water in a kiddie pool while he suns himself on a roof. Another man comes up to him and puts a shotgun in his face.

The Gist: The man sunning himself Gal Dove, and the man with the gun is his partner in thievery, Don Logan (Emun Elliott). They’re getting ready to go with their crew — Aitch (John Dagleish), Pete (Ricci McLeod) and Larry (Kyle Rowe) — to rob a penny arcade. The job is a favor to Don, whose sister Cecilia (Tamsin Greig) owns a rival arcade and had a dispute with the owner of the one they’re robbing.

While they’re at a club celebrating their haul, Gal has an encounter with Deedee Harrison (Sarah Greene), who’s a porn star with the stage name Veronica Ames. They flirt a bit, but Gal is engaged to his girlfriend Marjorie (Eliza Bennett). At dinner with his family, Gal sees the tension between his mother and his sister Ann Marie (Clea Martin), who is running around with what is interpreted as a bad crowd.

After Cecilia told some associates about the job Don and Gal did for her, they let her in on a lead on a big job for a crime boss named Teddy Bass (Stephen Moyer), who is looking for thieves who are good and willing to do just about anything in his quest to rob Sir Stephen Eaton (Julian Rhind-Tutt), who does backchannel deals with the Chinese.

When they meet Bass at a house party he’s throwing, Bass tells them that this job can put them in the big time, and give them riches they can’t imagine. Don is in, but Gal is doubtful, because he doesn’t like working for anyone. He does meet Deedee again at the house party, and the two of them make an undeniable connection, even though they’re both with other people. The prospect of working for Marjorie’s dad is also vaguely unsatisfying to him. Gal tells Don he’s in.

Gal insists to Bass that they become partners in this venture, which seems to impress Bass. They execute Bass’s first plan, robbing a rare coin from an armored vehicle, almost perfectly, except for a loose end: Larry insanely calls out a security guard as the crew makes its way to its getaway location. Word gets back to Bass, and he wants that guard taken care of. Both Don and Gal have different views of what “taking care of” the problem should be, Don’s actions mostly driven by his sister screaming at him to take charge.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Sexy Beast is a prequel to the 2000 movie of the same name that starred Ben Kingsley as Don, Ray Winstone as Gal and Ian McShane as Teddy Bass. It’s weirdly reminiscent of The Gold, another British heist series on Paramount+.

Our Take: Created by Michael Caleo (The Sopranos), Sexy Beast feels like a pure IP play that doesn’t really have a purpose. Sure, the Jonathan Glazer-directed film from 24 years ago was well-received, mainly due to Kingsley’s performance as the ever-angry Don. But was there any kind of demand to see what Don and Gal’s partnership was like in the early ’90s, before they had the falling out depicted in the film?

The answer to that, of course, is hell no. None of these characters are beloved or so indelibly inked in pop culture that we want to see younger versions of them. Because of that, the series becomes just a standard heist show, and it’s quite a boring one.

It moves far too slowly, giving us backstories and conversations that aren’t particularly necessary or even germane to the larger plan that Bass is hatching. Then again, that plan that Bass is hatching is largely undefined as far as his motivations for it and his ultimate goal. He seems to want to rob this financier just because he’s basically bigfooting the territory of other high-stakes criminals, but the idea that Bass is robbing one criminal on behalf of other criminals doesn’t gain traction for us.

That leaves us with the relationships in the show: Don and Gal, Gal and Deedee, Gal and Marjorie, Don and Cecilia, and others we’re pretty sure will come up as the show goes along. We don’t care about any of them, and it seems like they’ll get in the way of the show executing this long, drawn out heist that would be better told in a two-hour movie instead of an 8-episode series.

Sex and Skin: Some of both on the porn sets where Deedee works.

Parting Shot: As Bass, Gal and Don celebrate the coin robbery with Gal and Don’s crew, Bass shoots Larry in the head as payback for leaving that loose thread. As the crew sits in stunned silence, Gal insists that the loose thread is taken care of. “Let’s have fun tonight,” says Bass.

Sleeper Star: Stephen Moyer is gleefully oily as the morality-challenged Bass, which is a change from many of the roles he’s known for.

Most Pilot-y Line: Deedee complains to her husband that she can’t get out of her adult film contract, and can’t direct films. She can’t even keep her stage name if she tries to get out. Not only are we wondering just what Deedee’s plot will be about, other than her joining Gal and Don in their heist adventures, we also wonder why she ever thought the adult film studio guys would do anything honorable.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Not only is Sexy Beast a series that feels unnecessary, given its connections to a film that wasn’t a big hit a quarter century ago, but it doesn’t even rise to the level of being a good heist show on its own merits.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.