AS EXPLOSIVE ACTION-DRAMA GANGS OF LONDON RETURNS, DIRECTOR CORIN HARDY, STAR SOPÉ DÌRÍSÙ AND MORE TELL US HOW THEY DESIGNED AND EXECUTED A BRUTAL DEATH-MATCH

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

SOPÈ ARE YOU UP FOR IT?

It’s a freezing-cold February day in an east London studio that clearly is impervious to heat. Empire is huddled around a monitor with Corin Hardy, lead director of the second season of Gangs Of London, partially to stay warm, but mainly to watch Hardy and his crew shoot a sequence that will serve as the audience’s re-introduction to Elliot Finch, the show’s nominal hero, played by Ṣọpé. Dìrísù.

The first season of Gangs Of London (in which, you’ll never believe it, a number of criminal gangs battled each other in London) quickly established itself as one of the finest action shows on television, with co-creator and lead director, Gareth Evans, pulling off the kind of bloody mayhem usually reserved for the big screen. When Evans stepped back from the second season to focus on his upcoming Tom Hardy-starring action movie Havoc, Hardy (Corin, not Tom) — who had directed several episodes of that first season — graduated to showrunner.

Hardy’s sensibilities are different from Evans’, but he’s no less of an action junkie and wanted to keep his foot firmly on the gas. “When I was finishing off Episode 9 of Season 1, I had so many thoughts of where this could go,” he says. “I wanted to take the ball and run with it, and part of my challenge was to concoct a series of set-pieces and action sequences throughout the eight episodes that weren’t repetitions of what we’ve seen before. So we’ve got hand-to-hand, home invasions, shootouts in Billingsgate Fish Market, and some car action.”

Here: returns as Elliot Finch.

He’s aided in this endeavour by Dìrísù, the show’s breakout star. A rare combination of superb dramatic actor and natural physical performer, Dìrísù was a surprise package first time around, equally at home with Elliot’s existential struggle as an undercover cop slowly drawn to the very people he’s meant to take down as he was beating the living crap out of a pub full of wrong’uns, armed only with a dart and an ashtray.