‘Sexy Beast’ Episode 3 Recap: Andor in the UK

Sexy Beast the TV show is basically like someone Andor’d Sexy Beast the movie. How’s that for high praise? But that’s what creator Michael Caleo and his co-writers have done on this thing: They took an iconic work of cinema (referring to the whole Star Wars gestalt rather than Rogue One specifically here) and made something rich, challenging, ugly, and darkly humane out of a prequel that fleshes out the original work’s world at length. It’s the damnedest thing.

It’s a dense thing, too. The number of viewpoint characters we encounter in this ep (“Won’t Soon Forget This”) rivals that of a Season 4 Game of Thrones episode, each one with their own subplot. Briefly, Gal has to get to the bottom of why his crew is being hired to steal lone artifacts like the Buddha statue, which he discovers has been missing for 30 years and been killed for before. Don has to follow his sister Cecilia’s orders and rough up a scammer despite not only Gal’s moral reservations but his own. Deedee has to figure out her next career and relationship moves, which involve going fully independent, inviting her sister to move in, and assaulting the McGraws’ chosen director on her way out the door. Marjorie and Ann Marie have to figure out what became of Gal’s mate and Ann Marie’s secret boyfriend Larry. Teddy has to be Teddy. And Freddie McGraw has to weather the trauma of his rape by Teddy Bass while getting to the bottom of the artifact thefts, two strands that converge when he finds out Teddy is the culprit and tries to execute him but can’t pull the trigger. Aitch and a crooked cop are in there too. 

What impresses me most now is not the density of the plot, but the show’s deepening darkness. Closeups on Freddie’s weeping eyes as he recklessly rockets his motorcycle along the London streets. (A clear homage to the Motorcyclist in Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin if you ask me.) Deedee’s postraumatic anxiety. The gruesome spectacle of Cecilia browbeating the still emotionally childlike Don into maiming the scammer, Casino-style, and the subsequent scene of him dissociatively talking himself through a game show on the television, still covered in blood. And Teddy gliding around, openly telling people he’ll murder their friends and rape their sisters, staring down the barrel of the gun of his victim knowing he’s terrorize the man so badly even now that he won’t pull the trigger.

The show needs that edge. There was something soul-curdling about the violence in the film. Part of that is Glazer’s nightmarish personal style, but it was also in the weird sexual energy of the way Don threatened Gal and Deedee — pissing all over their bathroom floor, waking a half-nude Gal up out of bed, bringing up Deedee’s history in porn in a way calculated to insult and hurt her when he knew she could overhear, constantly referring to the state of Gal’s body and his one-time prowess with the ladies, and his obsession with Aitch’s girlfriend Jackie due to their mildly kinky one-night stand years earlier. Then there was the menace of Teddy, portrayed by Ian McShane in a way that made clear he was capable of doing anything to anyone at any time, held back only by the question of whether the inconvenience makes it worth the effort. He felt like something out of the Black Lodge.

So if you’re going to peel back the layers a bit, this is more or less what I’d expect to find: that Don’s psychosis and sexual neurosis had an old and awful source, and that Teddy Bass is exactly the kind of person you were afraid he was. 

You’d also expect to find Gal and Deedee charming, and boy are they ever thanks to the warm, sultry performances of James McArdle and Sarah Greene respectively. They’re so likeable, you root for them so much, that you become complicit in their deceit of the people who love them, and whom I think they do still love in their own ways. It’s beautiful and it’s sad. That’s deft work.

The devil’s in the details, and on this show they all seem to click into place. All the crude sexual comments Don’s sister Cecilia makes (including the revelation that she euphemistically deflowered Gal when he was a kid) imply she was a victim of their dad’s herself before she saved Don, presumably from a fate she knew all too well. Aitch’s runaway success with women — the man has the kavorka — makes his happily domesticated retirement in the film both impressive and, now, intriguing. To find out about the statue Gal goes to an old girlfriend who’s a research librarian, demonstrating both that he can and does pull intelligent and interesting women as well as beautiful ones. The action and violence tends to hinge on memorable details, like the use of the tea kettle and gas burner during Gal and Don’s raid on the scammer’s house. Nathan Micay’s score immediately sucks the air out of the room the moment Stan Higgins shows up at Gal and Don’s local on Ted’s behalf. 

It’s a Sexy Beast worthy of the name. It really is the damnedest thing.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.