Peaky Blinders star Joe Cole has told Sky News he had no intention to return to another TV show about organised crime - but has been lured back thanks to new series Gangs Of London.
Despite being best known for playing the youngest of the violent Shelby brothers in hit period crime drama Peaky Blinders, the actor says he finds it easier to connect with characters of a milder temperament.
The star, also known for Black Mirror and Pure, spoke to Sky News at a screening of the first episode of Gangs Of London, alongside his co-star, Sope Dirisu (Humans, Next Of Kin).
Focusing on the power struggles surrounding international gangs controlling the capital, the series tells the story of the knock-on effects when the head of the city's most powerful crime family is gunned down, and the search for who ordered the hit is on.
Cole plays Sean Wallace, a son desperate for vengeance, while Dirisu plays Elliot Finch, a chancer who finds himself caught up in the inner workings of the crime family.
The show is violent, with several bloody, Tarantino-esque scenes. It will no doubt have viewers of a more squeamish disposition watching some parts through their fingers.
But there's a lot more to it than cleverly choreographed fights and gratuitous deaths. It's no "stereotypical East End Cockney" gangster show, as Dirisu puts it.
Ahead of the series' release, the stars are not giving too much away. But both actors say they knew as soon as they saw their first script that it was a show they wanted to be involved in.
"I remember receiving the script and initially hearing Gangs Of London and thinking, I don't need to do another gang show," says Cole.
"[But] it's the best script I've read in a long time and it's been made by some of the most incredible filmmakers across the board. I'm really excited. I think it's really special."
Despite the violence on screen, which provides plenty of heart-in-mouth moments for viewers, Dirisu says filming was a lot more relaxed.
"While those fight scenes - and there is definitely a horror element to one of them - whilst they are quite scary and quite intimidating to watch, the atmosphere on set while we were working was a completely different kettle of fish," he says.
Violence, Cole assures, isn't a trait he seeks in the characters he plays.
"I just get what I'm given," he says. "I don't quite know why because it's fairly far away from my temperament."
The actor says he found his characters in Pure, the series about OCD in which he played porn addict Charlie, and Black Mirror's Hang The DJ episode, which told the story of a dating programme putting an expiry date on relationships, easier than John Shelby or Sean Wallace.
"I find those characters easier to get, to understand and relate to," he says. "But in this industry you get what you're given so... It's only when you get to a certain stage in your career [that] you can start to be a bit more choosy."
Both Dirisu and Cole read up on organised crime as part of their research into their roles.
"Early on in the process, Gareth [Evans, the show creator] was showing us quite a lot of the research they'd done and I quickly got into a wormhole of stuff on YouTube and Google, and you can very quickly see how dark it can get," says Cole.
"I think there's an element of deferred moral ambiguity," says Dirisu, speaking about why viewers love a good criminal drama.
"Seeing people existing in the grey areas, bending the rules and breaking the rules, it's sort of fun and dynamic and like, oh my goodness, what's going to happen next?
"Also, it's just a world that we're not familiar with so there's an element of fantasy to it."
Gangs Of London stands out for featuring members of organised crime families from all over the world, with some scenes subtitled - which is how it should be in a series with London at its heart, says Dirisu.
He says the show is different to anything he has seen on TV before.
"It's always nice to be part of the production that's pushing the conversation forward," he says.
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Dirisu continues: "One of my favourite parts of watching TV at the moment in terms of diversity is subtitles. Parasite's just won best picture at the Oscars and there are maybe, like, three English words in it.
"It is an introduction to a different culture. Now, what happens in Gangs of London is that we have... You might walk down the street in London and hear seven or 17 different languages spoken in one stretch of 400 meters. And we have an element of that.
"We have people who are native speakers of languages that do exist in the city. We have Albanian speakers. We have Kurdish speakers. I don't think that everything should be dubbed. People who would speak Spanish or French to each other shouldn't be speaking in English, 'cus that's not how the characters would relate to each other.
"I think that's one thing that the series does very well. We have a massive palette of races and religions and languages and cultures to play with in this, the most cosmopolitan city in the world. And we do play with them rather than it just being a stereotypical East End Cockney sort of thing.
"We get to experience the internationality of London through this series."
All episodes of Gangs Of London are due to air on Sky Atlantic on 23 April
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April 14, 2020 at 01:48PM
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Peaky Blinders star: 'I didn't want another gang show - but Gangs Of London is really special' - Sky News
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