Outlaws

Our Review

Stephen Merchant’s crime comedy about seven strangers doing community service in Bristol — a Tory councilman, a leftist lawyer, an ex-con 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, desperate 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’ slow-burn 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.