'MobLand's Failure to Commit Is a Crime Against Television

Any questions about why there is barely any buzz around Paramount+’s MobLand, which like Netflix’s splashy The Gentlemen, was partially directed by British crime king Guy Ritchie (Ritchie created The Gentlemen, while Top Boy’s Ronan Bennett created MobLand) are swiftly answered by the premiere episode – no-one is that invested in this modern gangland tale. Despite starring venerable talents like Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren, the first two episodes do not convince us that an elongated development period did this series any favors – conceived as a prequel to Ray Donovan, the show purportedly took on a life of its own as an original story. 

There’s not a lot original about the first two episodes of MobLand (the only episodes provided to Telly Visions in advance), only a punchy premise and perfunctory efforts at character drama that you fear will be tediously stretched out over ten episodes. Two episodes into MobLand, there is no clear reason why this shouldn’t have been a two-hour Guy Ritchie crime film set in modern London starring Tom Hardy as a fixer for a crime family.

Irish ganglord Conrad Harrigan (Brosnan) lives on a plush estate with his wife Maeve (Mirren) and anxiously stews over the stability of his empire. In the opening scene, bagman Harry Da Souza (Hardy) mediates between feuding drug pushers in a restaurant kitchen, only to be instructed by Conrad to send a message by killing them in one fell swoop of automatic gunfire from Harry and his subordinates, Zosia (Jasmine Jobson) and Kiko (Antonio González Guerrero). These gang divisions are not dramatically substantive, they just exist as a pretext to shock the viewer with brutality in the first five minutes. 

It’s supposed to tell us a lot about Conrad and Harry – about the former’s resentful, paranoid rule and the latter’s reflexive loyalty – but the cliche just distances us from seeing the pair as real characters that transcend their archetypal molds. It sums up the entire first two episodes: the writing, directing, and acting are typified by a sense that no one’s trying nearly as hard as they should be.

The proper plot of MobLand Episodes 1 and 2 gives us something to work with. Conrad’s son and Harry’s loyal friend, Kevin (Paddy Considine), has a brat of a son, Eddie (Anson Boon). Everyone hates Eddie: he’s arrogant, boorish, stuck-up, and lashes out whenever he doesn’t get his way. At a nightclub with his friend Tommy (Felix Edwards), Eddie stabs a man and flees the scene – but although Eddie returns home, Tommy goes missing. The matter is complicated because Tommy is the son of Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell), a rival up-and-coming gangster who hates Kevin’s guts. (The feeling is mutual.) 

Hardy is not a newcomer to the Ritchie-verse: months before his breakout role in the prisoner biopic Bronson, he shared scenes with a post-The Wire Idris Elba in the Gerard Butler-led RocknRolla. As MobLand’s lead, Hardy’s scenes negotiating with a ready-for-war Richie, investigating Tommy’s disappearance, staying out of trouble with the cops, and navigating a fraught middle-class family life help MobLand feel like an actual story driven by characters and drama rather than a project everyone forgot they were making two weeks before shooting began. (Joanne Froggatt plays Harry’s wife, who is permanently on the brink of leaving him.) 

If only Hardy would shake himself awake from the sluggish, grunting stupor he now prefers to act in, there might be something to recommend. As it stands unabashedly, the nifty procedural plotting and occasional pockets of tense action (Sniper suspense! A country road car chase!) impress but are begging to be the show’s primary focus.

MobLand sags whenever we are inside the Harrigan keep, let down by saggy, sub-Godfather mafia betrayal and performances by Brosnan and Mirren that feel too big and imprecise to evoke real tension or drama. The contradictions of elitist, traditional values versus a career of (illegal) social mobility are on full display, as are attempts to make Brosnan feel like a livewire, erratic force who lashes out whenever he feels slighted. With the obvious characterization of his wife being the shrewd puppet master behind his rage, our time spent with the Harrigans is largely exhausting, practically goading us to find something more interesting to watch.

At least the final moments of “Rat Trap,” the second episode, hint that the mystery plot will escalate in the immediate future, even if it’s the only story element that convinces us to keep watching. We’ll have to see what happens down the line to properly judge MobLand’s credibility. However, as it stands, after two episodes, we’re considering getting our own fixer to get rid of it and clean up afterward, no questions asked.

MobLand premieres on Paramount+ on Sunday, March 30, 2025, and streams new episodes weekly on Sundays through the end of May.