Completing its 10 episode run on Sunday June 1st, the excellent Paramount+ series, MobLand, takes its place among the best that modern television drama has to offer. Created by Ronan Bennett and Guy Ritchie, this is an intense British gangster thriller that gets into the psyche of some very bad people. While the series doesn’t add anything new to the “Mob Drama” genre, Bennett and Ritchie imbue their story with a tight narrative and fill their cast with some of the finest character actors from across the pond.

Bennett has proven his worth by creating the excellent 2011 U.K. dramatic series, Top Boy and his interesting 2024 televisions adaptation of Fredrick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal, showing great skill in making well-worn stories feel fresh.

Guy Ritchie is a man who needs no introduction when speaking about the modern British crime picture. The filmmaker made a name for himself with a series of darkly comical Brit gangster flicks full of violent, sometimes deranged, always dangerous characters. Each film is set to a now unmistakable Guy Ritchie-rhythm and fueled by Rock, Ska, and Pop tunes that give the films a hip polish.

Not as flashy as Ritchie’s gangster flicks and in line with Bennett’s gritty vision of England’s underworld, the meeting of the two minds serves MobLand very well.

Set in modern-day London, the story focuses on Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy), a “fixer” for the Harrigans; an Irish crime family led by paterfamilias Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) and materfamilias Maeve (Helen Mirren, at her most vicious). Conrad holds a few dark secrets and is not content enough to enjoy the money he has made and the life his “hard work” has allowed his family. Conrad is one mean bastard who always wants more.

Mirren’s character is the most dangerous villain in a show full of them. Her Machiavellian schemes put everything and everyone in danger. As the series begins, Maeve could be called the show’s Lady Macbeth. As the story gets deeper, her plotting casts her as more of a female Iago.

Brosnan and Mirren work well off one another. The former Bond rarely gets a chance to sink his teeth into such a complicated character. Conrad affords the actor one of the strongest performances of his later career. Mirren is with him for every beat. While the Oscar-winner is great at these types of roles (witnessed by her recent work as the strong Irish wife to Harrison Ford’s rancher on Tyler Sheridan’s 1923), this one gives Mirren a lot to work with. This review won’t spoil the lengths Maeve goes to in her quest to secure a future, but it is a twisted delight to watch Dame Helen at the peak of her powers.

The great Paddy Considine is Kevin Harrigan, Conrad and Maeve’s son who befriended Harry when they were both in a Young Offenders Institution. The two became lifelong mates, hence Harry working for the family. He isn’t blood, but he kept Conrad’s son alive and earned a spot protecting the Harrigan clan. In many ways, Harry has become more important to the survival of the family than anyone. 

The Harrigans have an understood “truce” with London’s other major crime family, the Stevensons, led by the no-bullshit Richie (a mesmerizing Geoff Bell). The already unstable peace is shattered when Conrad’s psychotic grandson Eddie (an exquisitely slimy Anson Boon) stabs a guy while he and Richie’s son Tommy are in a nightclub. The two are seen leaving together, but Tommy disappears, setting off a labyrinthine story of Harry’s desperate attempt to find Tommy before Richie starts killing everyone. In the meantime, Harry must keep Conrad from making rash decisions, navigate the ever-muddying waters created by Maeve, and placate his own wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt) and daughter Gina (Teddie Allen).

Harry is also dealing with Kevin’s wife Bella (Lara Pulver) another schemer whose side deals are further complicating the Harrigan’s business, as is Conrad and Maeve’s screwup son Brendan (Daniel Betts), who is no longer a part of the family’s dealings after proving himself a serial blunderer. Brendan is trying to pull Conrad’s daughter Saraphina (Mandeep Dhillon) into his next money making idea. 

Saraphina is the product of one of Conrad’s affairs. She is treated as family by everyone except Maeve, who wouldn’t shed a tear if something were to happen to the young woman. Saraphina is a constant reminder of her husband’s many infidelities.

Add to the mix a police investigation that gets too close for comfort for the Harrigans (and for Harry) that threatens to be another nail in the crime family’s not too distant coffin.  

Through it all, Harry does not get a moment’s rest, as the pressure builds and builds, giving Tom Hardy the perfect role for the type of intense performance he plays so effortlessly. While it’s probably time for the actor to branch out to more versatile characters, Harry is the kind of part Hardy does best. 

MobLand is rich in story and character. Bennet and co-writer Jez Butterworth fill each episode with family drama, changing allegiances, sudden violence, and minute-to-minute danger for all. Patient viewers will be rewarded as this loaded tale unfolds. There is a lot of plot to take in, but the writers don’t make anything too complicated. The age of streaming has given birth to audiences who allow themselves to be immersed in episodic series. Many at-home viewers take issue with any movie over two hours, but can binge a television show’s season in one day. This gripping series is certainly ripe for binge watching. 

Guy Ritchie directed the first two episodes and sets the tone for the series. Ritchie’s best gangster movies (Snatch, RocknRolla, and The Gentlemen) have a grim underbelly. For this project, the flippant sheen of those films gives way to something more grim. The story of Harry and the lit-fuse of a street war between the Hannigans and the Stevensons is deadly serious; a tone that works in its favor. 

MobLand is a dark and violent London-based crime thriller. The tough talk, bursts of hardcore mob violence, an impending implosion of its characters harken back to great British works such as Mike Hodges original Get Carter and John McKenzie’s The Long Good Friday. There are times when this series is that good. 

While the gangster genre wheel isn’t reinvented, Guy Ritchie and Ronan Bennett have created a tale and characters so tense and compelling, it all feels fresh.

 

MobLand

Series Creator Ronan Bennett

Series Writers Ronan Bennett & Jez Butterworth

Series Directors Guy Ritchie, Anthony Byrne, Lawrence Gough, Daniel Syrkin

Starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, Paddy Considine, Geoff Bell, Anson Boon, Joanne Froggett, Lara Pulver, Teddie Allen, Mandeep Dhillon, Daniel Betts

TV-MA, Paramount, 101 Studios