Paramount+'s 'Sexy Beast' Prequel Casts Three Main Roles

At the mention of psychological black comedy crime films from the 2000s, most people immediately think of Guy Richie's Snatch or In Bruges, the 2008 Irish film starring Colin Farrell. But the genre, which Quentin Tarantino jump-started in the mid-1990s with Pulp Fiction, had already produced its cult classic masterpiece in 2000 with the Jonathan Glazer-penned Sexy Beast, starring Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, and Ian McShane, and earned Kingsley an Oscar nomination. Now, a Sexy Beast spinoff is heading to streaming (and should not be mixed up with the terrible British-produced reality series Sexy Beasts on Netflix).

Produced by Paramount+ as part of their ambitious U.K. slate, the Sexy Beast prequel extrapolates its plot from the film. In the original, British ex-criminal Gal Dove (Winstone) is pressured into taking on "one last job" by former associate Don Logan (Kingsley) planned by crimelord Teddy Bass (McShane). Dove, happily married to DeeDee (Amanda Redman) and living in Spain, returns to London to do the job, unaware that Don has been killed until after it is over. The new series will rewind the clock to London in the early 1990s when Gal and Don were in full swing and explore why Gal eventually left the business.

James McArdle (Mary Queen of Scots) will take over the role made famous by Winstone as a young Gal Dove, with Emun Elliot (Guilt) as the Young Don Logan. Stephen Moyer (True Blood) takes on Ian McShane's role as a middle-aged Teddy Bass, just coming into his own as a crimelord. Sarah Greene (Normal People) plays DeeDee, whom Gal meets and falls in love with over the series. Sexy Beast was the first of a wave of U.K. original dramas commissioned by Paramount+ in the last year, which includes other titles like Flatshare, A Gentleman in Moscow, and The Burning Girls, all of which aren't expected to start arriving until next year at the earliest.