I am not a hard man, I admit it, the thought of violence exploding around me, makes me instinctively look for a teacher to tell. But… I bloody love Gangs of London.

Yes, the most balletic of extremely violent TV series is back for its third series on Sky Atlantic/Now TV on March 20th and I cannot wait to dig into the power shenanigans that surround the underworld of London Taaahn…

If you have missed it so far, you have missed (deep breath and spoilers) a man held upside down from the top of a tower building… then set alight… then dropped. And that was just the first five minutes of the first episode of season 1. Since then, we have had, in no particular order, a knife fight with a member of the gypsy community, ended when our hero dragged the very muscular foe’s neck across an exposed meat clever, a man given a paralysing drug, then having his wrist slashed, a hand cut between the middle and index finger, and literally ripped apart (an image I still see occasionally when I close my eyes), a main character having his hand chopped off, a man given a poison burger which made him bleed to death from the eyes, a sniper’s bullet that blows a man’s head apart, a machete attack at a bank, leaving its innocent staff walking around cradling various stumps, a character’s wife buried alive (she made it thankfully), about 1600 henchmen beatings, approx. 900 henchmen shot to death and much, much more. It is not for the faint of heart, nervous or those who vomit at the sight of blood.

Knitting together all these acts of wanton violence is the story of the Wallace crime family. The patriarch, and linchpin of the London underworld, Finn Wallace (Colm Meaney), is killed very early in the first episode. This leaves his vengeful son Sean (Joe Cole) trying to hold together the empire with his mother (Michelle Fairley) long time business partner Ed Dumani (Lucian Msamati) and Ed’s smooth son (Paapa Essiedu) All under the watchful eye of the brooding, grieving undercover cop Elliott (Sope Dirisu).

What follows is a smorgasbord of shifting alliances, drug deals, heists, fights, betrayals, and more death than your average disaster movie, as they battle the many ethnic gangs in London to become top dogs.

This is what I love about the show, the sheer variety of faces. It has taken the ethnic melting pot that is our capital city and made a dramatic, balletic orgy of violence that is completely lacking in the cockney gangsta clichés that certain directors (Who may or may not rhyme with “Rye Gitchie”) did to death in the late 90s and 00s. In its place are fully fleshed out ethnic-based gangs, with immigrant dreams, long standing grudges from the homeland and absolute amorality.

Whilst we’re on Directors, a word here for the Executive Producer Gareth Roberts, if you watch this show, and see violent set pieces in restricted places, where one super tough hero takes on legions of criminals with his bare hands and whatever he can lay those hands-on (Scarf violence anyone?) it may remind you of a film. Well, that film was The Raid (2013) and marked the feature debut of the Welshman Roberts, who had fused the martial arts films of the East with a gritty Western shooting style. This is a style that runs through GOL, and it’s sumptuous. Long tracking shots featuring all sorts of ungodly beatings, extreme close-ups of limbs breaking, and a hero who just goes on and on and on, no matter how much punishment he is taking. This signature directing style is continued throughout both series, making it one of the most cinematic action series available on the small screen.

But all this violence would be nothing without the characters… the son determined to step out of the shadow of his father, the forgotten mother who is seizing her chance to shine, the sweet-natured brother fighting the corrosive nature of his crime family, the hard-bitten ex-cop with nothing to lose, running from his own tragedy… all of these interact in a fresh, uncompromising take on good, evil and all in between. I personally cannot wait to see the imaginative ways they break bodies in series 3!

Gangs of London returns Thursday 20th March on Sky Atlantic.