Outlaws

Our Review

Stephen Merchant’s crime comedy about seven strangers doing community service in Bristol, a Tory councilman, a leftist lawyer, a former convict going straight, a catfishing businessman, a failed influencer, a party girl, and a lonely woman, who find a bag of drug money and become entangled with the criminal who wants it back. Merchant’s comic timing (as the lanky, final option lawyer Greg) anchors the ensemble, and the class comedy texture. Bristol’s gentrified edges versus its working class bones, gives it more on its mind than the plot requires.

The heist adjacent shenanigans are fun; the characters’ patient build bonding (from strangers who hate each other into a found family of losers) is the real engine. Christopher Walken joins as Frank, an aging con trying to reach his granddaughter, yes, Walken, being Walken, in Bristol, and it’s delightful. Three seasons, each tightening the circle, ending cleanly.

Verdict: Watch it. Community service has never been this much fun, or this armed.