During our time writing these reviews, we’ve found that we can more or less nail how a show is going to proceed just from its first episode (we check other reviews after we write ours just to make sure we’re not completely off base). But sometimes, it’s hard to get a read on a show after its first episode. Take MobLand, from Ronan Bennet and Guy Ritchie, for instance; after we watched the first episode, we hoped that it would get deeper than what we saw, but we’re not sure it will. Read on for more.
MOBLAND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: In a darkened walk-in freezer, we pan up on a man saying “We have to find a solution, right? We have to find a way forward.”
The Gist: The man saying that is Harry De Souza (Tom Hardy), the fixer for the Harrigan crime family in London. He’s trying to negotiate a peace between the heads of the groups that supply his family with the various drugs and other items that fund their business.
When two main players won’t apologize to each other, Harry goes up to the restaurant dining area, where the family’s boss, Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan) is having dinner. Harry doesn’t think the truce will stick long, and Conrad has intel that they’ve been skimming from him. “It’s always the same, in any orchard,” Conrad says. “You plant the trees. The trees grow tall. Then sooner or later, they begin to get mangled, and before you know it, the apples start to rot. And that, Harry my son, is pruning time.” In other words, kill everyone in the room and take over their supply businesses.
The Harrigans themselves are in a tenuous peace with the Stevenson family, one of the other big mob families in the city. That peace, though, is about to be interrupted when Conrad’s grandson Eddie (Anson Boon) ends up stabbing someone in a club while he’s out with Tommy Stevenson (Felix Edwards), the son of Stevenson family boss Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell). After that night, Tommy disappears.
The next morning, Archie (Alex Jennings), the family consigliere, arrives at the Harrigan estate, surprising Conrad’s wife Maeve (Helen Mirren). He wants Archie to start negotiating their move into the fentanyl market. Archie doesn’t think that’s a good idea, because that’s a Stevenson business. When Archie says “We don’t want to start a war with the Stevensons,” Conrad responds, “Why not?”
In the meantime, Harry goes to Eddie’s father Kevin (Paddy Considine), looking to question Eddie about Tommy’s disappearance. Eddie refuses to say whether Tommy was with him or not when the stabbing happened. It’s up to Harry to go to the stabbing victim and threaten him into silence, then he has a summit meeting with Richie Stevenson at a neutral boxing gym that does these meetings often.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Ronan Bennett (The Day Of The Jackal), with Guy Ritchie (The Gentlemen) directing the first episode, MobLand definitely has a Ray Donovan feel to it. In fact, the show was originally conceived to be a Ray Donovan prequel series.
Our Take: The story that pushes the first season of MobLand is pretty straightforward: Despite his years as the head of the Harrigan family, Conrad Harrigan is always looking for more. He’s also as bloodthirsty and ruthless as it gets, as we see when he gathers his kids — Kevin and Brendan (Daniel Betts), plus Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon), who is not Maeve’s daughter — and Archie to tell them about his push into the fentanyl business. He only needs a whiff that Archie may be playing both sides to make his childhood friend pay a high price.
So there is definitely going to be a war between the Harrigans and Stevensons, with Harry De Souza caught in the middle. For some reason, though, the prospect of a mob war by itself doesn’t feel like it’s going to be compelling enough to hold viewers’ interest. Where the series will have to go is to really dive into the emotions and personalities of the principals involved in these two families, especially the Harrigans. The more the show does that, the better it will be.
For instance, we see that Harry has more or less a normal family life, but his marriage is strained enough that his wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt) wants them to go into counseling. It’s going to be up to him to keep the tensions between the two families from escalating into a full-on bloodbath. But that will be hard when his boss wants the bloodbath to happen so he can consolidate power.
The further we get into the psyches of these characters, the more compelling the season will be. Having Hardy, Brosnan and Mirren in place certainly helps. Brosnan is especially effective as the ruthless Conrad, and as we see at the end, Mirren’s Maeve has a lot of influence over the decisions Conrad makes; he tells her to chose “stick or twist” when the opportunity arises to kill Richie Stevenson, for instance. Having such accomplished actors in these roles makes us think that we’ll be delving deeper into their personalities and histories and not just watch families exchange gunfire for the entire season.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, but it’s definitely violent as hell.
Parting Shot: After his incident with Archie, Conrad is overcome with emotion. Maeve tries to reach out, and he yells, “Get your fucking hands off me, woman!”
Sleeper Star: Joanne Froggatt is definitely a wildcard as Jan De Souza. How much does she know about Harry’s work, and how much will she use that knowledge to make him a more attentive spouse?
Most Pilot-y Line: The show is definitely one that will require most viewers to turn on subtitles, between the various working-class accents and slang being thrown around.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re giving a tentative recommendation to MobLand because of the cast and the show’s potential to go deep into its characters’ psyches. But we also wonder if this is just a generic mob drama with a prestige drama skin on it, which would be a big disappointment if that was the case.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘MobLand’ On Paramount+, Where A Fixer Is In The Middle Of Two Warring Mob Families In London appeared first on Decider.
