MobLand Review
MobLand is attractive but not enough to bring us into their world.
The show immediately throws us into Harry Da Souza played by the brute Tom Hardy, resolving a dispute between two crime families. It’s a tense scene that gets the tension immediately taken out of it once Harry leaves the room to consult with Conrad Harrigan played by Pierce Brosnan on what to do next. And once Brosnan gives his blessing, Harry leaves, and the bullets start flying.
We’re in England and not Newark, so I am unaware of the significance of English mob families as much as in America. When the episode premieres it explains how the sons from different families spending time together is a bad thing, it means just as much as Hogwarts house names, but we don’t know how important it is. On a night out in town, Tommy Stevenson (Felix Edwards) weasel their way into a nightclub when Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) stabs a man and now Harry is forced to clean up the mess to avoid problems.
It’s a different kind of world of stubbornness and spoiledness, Harry has to deal with. When collecting any evidence that may incriminate Eddie, the spoiled boy does not want to give up his shoes because they are Italian.
An hour went by and I’m not sure who Harry De Souza is. He teases us with the threatening of going from first to sixth gear restraining the violent side but he even seems too tired to do so. Once you think Harry is going to be a character we can sympathize with and see a human outside of the crime world, we do not.
When the slightest emotional resignation comes from any character, which seems to be Harry, it presents itself as thin as the interaction between him and his wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt) about setting up an appointment for couples therapy. All there is to know about the man is he lives by the mantra of “If I say I'm going to do something, it gets done” in every aspect of life.
Nobody seems to be dangerous in this show. Pierce Brosnan is playing the head of the Harrigan crime family who has been dipping his foot into roles where he is the shot caller; recently appearing as head of NCSC in Steven Soderbergh’s spy film, Black Bag and now on the opposite side of the law. Brosnan’s choice of adding an Irish accent on top of his natural Irish accent can benefit from being taken down a few notches. He is the leader of a crime family with a leaky pipe and has sporadic ticks of spitting in his hand and clapping whenever a good idea strikes.
MobLand seems to be already complicated and incoherent to bounce between crime families instead of focusing on the Harrigans and the powers of Conrad and his wife Maeve (Helen Mirren). The series premiere does not start to heat up until we are in the Harrigan mansion for a family sit down when the infamous mafia loyalty and family relations blend.
There is an underwhelming, empty, milder collage of mob business being conducted here filled with the expected meetings, suspicion, lies, greed, and family, but now in Europe. We’ve seen it before but it will be impossible to hang on for ten episodes if the audience can’t focus on the muscle/fixer-upper of Harry when there is nothing to know about him.
