Mobland

MobLand is the Tom Hardy / Pierce Brosnan / Helen Mirren crime drama Paramount+ has been quietly turning into its tentpole. Guy Ritchie directing the pilot, Ronan Bennett writing — so yes, it's good. Better than good, actually. The kind of show that earns its 10-episode run.

What it actually is

London, present day. The Harrigans run an old-school crime family that has stopped being purely Irish and started being London-multicultural. Hardy plays Harry Da Souza, the family fixer — the man who shows up at 3 a.m. when a body needs moving. Pierce Brosnan plays the patriarch Conrad. Helen Mirren plays his wife Maeve, and she steals every scene she's in. Paddy Considine is the unstable son. There's a rival family. There are bent cops. There's the inevitable second-generation succession problem.

It's a Ritchie show without being Ritchie-by-numbers. The cockney rhyming slang is dialled down. The set pieces are more tense than flashy. It's closer in spirit to Peaky Blinders than to Snatch, with a slow-burn streak that surprises if you came in expecting Lock Stock.

If you want to watch and don't have the streamer, a Paramount+ gift card is the cheap entry. Or grab the Blu-ray when it lands physical media.

What it does well

Hardy. The man can play silent menace better than anyone working. His Da Souza is a guy who has done bad things and accepts the bill, and you can read three different emotions on his face during a 10-second pause. The character is closer to his Locke or Bronson register than his Bane or Capone.

Mirren is the other reason to watch. Maeve Harrigan is the matriarch from hell — old money, old cruelty, will end you at the breakfast table with a quiet sentence. Watching her work with Brosnan, who is having more fun than he's had since the Bond years, is the show's best pleasure.

The writing dodges most of the obvious crime-show traps. Snitches don't always die. Power doesn't always corrupt the way you expect. Loyalty isn't binary. By episode 4 you'll have changed your mind about three characters.

If you're into the genre, build a watchlist: the Peaky Blinders complete series on Blu-ray, The Sopranos box set if you're somehow missing it, and Tom Hardy's Locke for the masterclass in single-actor performance.

What it doesn't do well

The pacing dips around episodes 5-6. Bennett tries to do too many subplots and the rival-family stuff feels half-baked compared to the Harrigan-internal politics. You can skim through those scenes without losing the main thread.

The female characters outside Mirren are underwritten. There's a daughter, a wife, a girlfriend, and they each get maybe two beats of actual interiority. That's the show's biggest blind spot and worth saying out loud.

The verdict

Worth your time. Not the best crime drama of the decade — that's still The Sopranos and probably always will be — but easily a top-three of the year. Hardy and Mirren alone justify the binge. The second-season renewal is reportedly close to confirmed; expect an announcement in the next few months.

For a deeper read on the British crime tradition it's working in, pick up Jake Arnott's The Long Firm. It's the genre's underrated masterpiece and you'll see MobLand differently afterwards.

Episode 4 is where the show breaks. Get there before you decide.