Gamba Cole gives The Outlaws a credible sense of danger through quiet, watchful playing. We rate the performance more highly than the series, and want to see that restraint given a steadier script.
Fi1m perspective
In The Outlaws (2021), Gamba Cole’s Christian stays quiet in a comedy with plenty of louder company. We were unsettled by his watchfulness, which made the threat around Christian feel credible. He carries much of the series’ danger without losing his place in the ensemble. It is an effective performance in Stephen Merchant’s warm but uneven comedy about strangers on community payback.
Smaller television and film parts, including Anton in Hanna (2019), George in His House (2020) and Benny in The Protégé (2021), came before that breakthrough. The Outlaws gave him a lead across three series. His familiarity with Bristol speech helps Christian feel at home in the programme’s setting. Local knowledge is useful here, but Cole’s control is what keeps the character interesting.
Merchant gives him useful company in Rhianne Barreto, whose Rani has a brightness that keeps turning angry. Cole’s quieter playing sits well beside hers; both give the comedy room to become uncomfortable without abandoning their characters. The difficulty comes when the programme asks its crime plot to carry more weight than the writing can support. We recommend Cole’s performance more readily than the whole series, which is funny in bursts but less sure of itself when the weapons appear.
The theatre work includes Moses in The Lonely Londoners (2024) and Raheem Sterling in Dear England (2025). Those parts sit alongside a screen career in which loyalty, family responsibilities and pressure from the people around him recur. The risk is that quiet watchfulness becomes the only thing casting directors ask of him, rather than one choice among several. We would like to see a screen lead that lets him do more than make the darker passages believable. Try The Outlaws for the ensemble, provided a dependable crime story is not the main attraction.
Biography
Gamba Cole is a British actor. He was born on 18 November 1992 in Bristol, England, and studied a BTEC in performing arts at Richmond upon Thames College in London. Before pursuing acting professionally, he worked as a security guard.
Cole made his screen debut in the mid-2010s and gained wider recognition for his lead role as Christian (also known as Ben Eastfield) in the BBC and Amazon series The Outlaws (2021–present). His other television credits include appearances in Hanna (2019), A Discovery of Witches (2021), Death in Paradise (2023) and Three Little Birds (2023). Film roles include George in His House (2020) and Benny in The Protégé (2021).
He began his career in theatre, debuting in 2014 in Kingston 14 at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, and has since performed in productions including Dear England at the National Theatre.
