Advertisement

Rupert Grint's Snatch TV spin-off is getting panned

Flop… Grint’s Snatch TV show is getting panned – Credit: Crackle
Flop… Grint’s Snatch TV show is getting panned – Credit: Crackle

The reviews for the TV spin-off of Guy Ritchie’s 2000 crime caper ‘Snatch’ are in… but they’re pretty awful.

‘Harry Potter’ star Rupert Grint – also the show’s executive producer – leads the cast onto the small screen, playing Charlie Cavendish, a ‘criminal aristocrat’, alongside a group of similarly inclined charming young miscreants.

Among the cast are Tamar Hassan, Luke Pasqualino, Lucien Laviscount, Marc Warren, Dougray Scott and Phoebe Dyvenor.

But despite a smattering of stars, this south east London-based mess of gangster shenanigans is not doing much to impress the critics.

On Digital Spy, Morgan Jeffery writes: “[Snatch] isn’t doomed to failure. But fail it does, because while at points it works hard to mimic the original film, at others it totally misses what made Ritchie’s flick work.

“It’s hard to imagine anyone being won over by a tale of London bad boys that’s more Only Fools than Long Good Friday.”

Meanwhile, Collider brands the project ‘a waste of time and money’.

“[It’s] a series that wants to be risky but doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers and is more than happy to utilize name recognition from the original film to sell a cheap knock-off,” adds Chris Cabin.

(Credit: Crackle)
(Credit: Crackle)

A.V. Club also calls it a ‘bland Guy Ritchie knock-off’.

Stuart Heritage in The Guardian, with a two-star review, isn’t exactly complimentary (‘The dialogue… stinks like a corpse on a hot day’), but there were a handful of veiled compliments.

“In no way, viewed from any conceivable angle, is Snatch a good television programme,” he writes.

“But that’s fine, because Snatch wasn’t a very good film either. It was an overpacked, overcomplicated hodgepodge of ideas, made by Guy Ritchie like he’d just been told he’d never get to work again. It was too showy, too convoluted. It was a mess. Meanwhile, the TV show barely has any ideas, which actually ends up working in its favour. All the storylines have been streamlined, and every new development being explained and explained again, just to make sure that everyone gets it. It’s shameless spoon-feeding, but at least it’s easy to digest.”

Variety was kinder, but still retained its reservations, Sonia Saraiya concluding: “As far as fan-fiction goes, it’s splendid fun, with performers that are enjoying their romp through carefree capers.

“But it’s hard not to feel like everyone involved in ‘Snatch’ is just auditioning for parts in a film that was made over 15 years ago, as if wishing really hard might make it possible.”

The series continues on Crackle on Thursday nights.

Read more:
Watch the first trailer for Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver

What we learned from the Wonder Woman trailer
Ridley Scott has ideas for a Gladiator sequel