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It’s a near-universally held truth that Christopher Walken makes everything better. Whether it’s a music video, a sketch comedy bit, or a feature-length film, everything is a little bit cooler when the Oscar-winning actor is involved. The Amazon series The Outlaws proves that’s as true for British crime comedies as it is for every other genre.
Co-created and directed by Emmy winner Stephen Merchant (The Office, Extras), The Outlaws follows seven strangers forced to perform community service together in Bristol, England. When they discover a bag of money in the building they’re cleaning, it sets off a series of events that tests whether they can overcome their differences long enough to survive.
Walken joins an ensemble cast in the series, and portrays con artist Frank Sheldon, who rejoins his daughter’s family after a stint in prison. The crew of misfits paying off their debts to society also includes bumbling lawyer Greg (played by Merchant), kleptomaniac Rani (Rhianne Barreto), businessman John (Darren Boyd), activist Myrna (Clare Perkins), influencer Gabby (Eleanor Tomlinson), and local troublemaker Christian (Gamba Cole), who’s serving out his sentence while caring for his teenage sister.
Although he’s the most high-profile actor in the series (and just as entertaining to watch as ever), Walken never overshadows the talented cast around him. Each member of the titular group of ne’er-do-wells gets ample amounts of backstory-nourishing attention, making it hard not to cheer for them as the series rolls along — that even goes Boyd’s character, whose casual racism makes him a tough sell even on his best days.
Still, while Walken is captivating and each cast member shines in their own way, they’re at their best when they’re together — whether in small clusters that contrast their personalities or larger groups that have them bouncing off each other in unexpected ways. Merchant is a master of small exchanges that yield big laughs, and those moments propel the series forward every time it starts to feel bogged down in drama.
Over the course of the season’s six episodes, The Outlaws occasionally seems desperate to establish its dramatic cred, but tends to stall when it lingers too long on the main narrative thread — one involving a drug kingpin’s stolen money, local law enforcement’s investigation, and the moral quandary faced by the group.
Fortunately, the strength of the humor makes up for any rough plot threads, because when the primary crime narrative does wrap up, the resolution isn’t an entirely satisfying one. Instead, seeing the characters finally overcome their differences ends up being a more rewarding culmination to the story arcs at play in the series, regardless of who ends up with the money.
The series’ talented, endlessly entertaining cast is ultimately the biggest selling point of The Outlaws, and how much enjoyment you get from it will likely depend on whether you’re looking for a crime drama with a dash of comedy, or a character-based comedy with a dash of crime drama. If it’s the latter, you’re in for a treat, but if it’s the former, you might have to work a little harder to enjoy the series. Even so, there’s plenty to like about The Outlaws regardless of your expectations, and the show’s talented cast — including, of course, Walken — makes a good series even better.
Season 1 of The Outlaws premieres April 1 on Amazon Prime Video.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?