It’s a time-honoured way to open a crime thriller: a body, some dodgy blokes digging a grave, and a voiceover from the protagonist teasing the journey to come, wherein we will find out how the lads got into this sticky situation. You can’t accuse A Gangster’s Kiss of not knowing the genre template, as it then transitions into another stock gambit (one more typically beloved of comedy) and we flash back to their childhoods and see mini-me versions of the characters acting in ways that foreshadow how they will turn out as grownups. Bonus points for the behaviour being oh-so-hilariously inappropriate to the age of the kid involved. If a small child saying “fanny magnet” is your jam, A Gangster’s Kiss loses no time in assuring you that you’ve come to the right place.
The plot, such as it is, concerns a young man (Charlie Clapham) who, at the behest of his entrepreneurial mates, tries a variety of get-rich-quick careers before settling on acting and becoming a cast member on an EastEnders style soap. He continues to associate with local gangsters, however, giving rise to the aforementioned escapades. Remember Jay from The Inbetweeners: a wonderful comic figure with tall tales of sexual hi-jinks and other improbable heroic exploits? Well, watching A Gangster’s Kiss is a bit like being caught up in a full-scale dramatisation of one of Jay’s made-up stories: everything is larger than life, none of it is very plausible, and at times it can be quite diverting, but you’ll be relieved when it’s over. (There’s even a small role for David Schaal, who played Jay’s dad in the sitcom.)
A Gangster’s Kiss involves many of the same talents, on and offscreen, as the recent Bermondsey Tales (Vas Blackwood, Charlie Clapham, John Hannah, Michael Head), and is essentially a similar proposition, full of flamboyant hard men who aren’t afraid to knock heads together and do the big swears. There’s probably some sort of audience out there for this kind of thing; certainly people who are concerned that you “can’t say anything these days” should be pleased to see such colourful evidence that you absolutely can. The question, as with Jay’s hyperbolic flights of ego-boosting fantasy, is whether anyone else can be bothered to listen.