Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan star in new British gangster series MobLand – streaming on Prime Video. David Michael Brown goes toe to toe with this new contender.
In the ever-changing streaming landscape, there is one genre that has proved a dependable mainstay, the British gangster show. From the razor-sharp historical drama of Peaky Blinders and the relentless action of The Raid helmer Gareth Evans’ Gangs of London to the television versions of Sexy Beast and The Gentlemen, foul-mouthed tough guy geezers with a penchant for gut-wrenching brutality have been all the rage.
MobLand is steeped in that lineage. The fast-paced series may be modern in its outlook, but it harks back to a bygone era in British cinema. The first two episodes are directed by the “Mockney Godfather” himself Guy Ritchie, the British filmmaker who made his name helming Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and The Gentlemen. While the aforementioned shows are obvious influences on the show, it’s a 1980’s slice of Cool Britannia, itself a huge influence on Ritchie’s career as a director, that makes itself most felt as the familial feuding of MobLand bloodily unfolds.
Arguably the greatest British gangster flick ever made, John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday gave Pierce Brosnan his big break as an IRA terrorist known as “1st Irishman” while Helen Mirren famously starred opposite Bob Hosking’s kingpin as his lover and partner-in-crime. Now, in MobLand, the pair play Conrad and Maeve Harrigan, the patriarch and matriarch of a mob family at war. Tom Hardy, who starred as the notorious ‘60s East End gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray in Brian Helgeland’s Legend along with playing the lead as Britain’s most violent criminal in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson, plays their “fixer” Harry de Souza.
As the old adage goes, behind every great man is an even greater woman. Conrad Harrigan (Bronson) may be the face of the Irish crime family, the Harrigans, but it’s his manipulative wife Maeve (Mirren) who is the brains of the operation. If there is a dilemma that threatens to derail the Harrigan drug empire, it is she who Conrad listens to. The rest of the family business is taken up by their sons Kevin (Paddy Considine) and Brendan (Daniel Betts), plus Conrad’s daughter Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon) while Conrad’s childhood friend and Harrigan family associate Archie (The Crown’s Alex Jennings) offers less than sage advice.
Brosnan, in a devilish role a million miles from the sharp-suited heroics of Remington Steele and the swagger of his incarnation of James Bond, obviously relishes playing the bad guy. Giving nouveau aristocrat Conrad Harrigan a roguish Irish brogue, he revels in the tense scenes, whether exchanging barbs with fellow gangland boss and arch nemesis Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell) or negotiating treachery.
Talking about developing his character, Brosnan, now 71, told Sharp Magazine, “I think that’s one of the threads and themes of Guy’s work.”
“He takes from the greats. He takes the storylines, the themes of Shakespearean dramas or Jacobean tragedies. So, Helen and I talked about Macbeth, about King Lear. You can have that as a grand notion in your head, and it sticks. It seeps into your body language and the playing of it can be, from my perspective, quite theatrical. He’s a big character, is Conrad.”
Opposite him is one of England’s finest actresses. By the time she starred in The Long Good Friday she had worked with some of Britain’s finest filmmakers including Michael Powell in Age of Consent, Ken Russell in Savage Messiah and Lyndsay Anderson in O Lucky Man! as well as the notorious Caligula. And now, as she gets involved in the criminal underworld once again, the Oscar winner sees parallels with other characters she has played throughout her esteemed career.
“I think of all the characters I’ve played, the closest I’ve come to playing a character like Maeve was playing Lady Macbeth in [the] Scottish play many years ago,” Mirren said in a recent interview with CNN. “She has a lot of those qualities: profoundly ambitious and ruthless. Absolutely ruthless. I guess Elizabeth I [in the Emmy-winning 2005 miniseries] and probably Catherine the Great of Russia [in the 2019 miniseries] may be sort of similar, but they were more restricted by their culture and their station,” Mirren added.
Despite such illustrious co-stars, however, it’s Tom Hardy who steals the show as the thuggish fixer who finds himself between the two warring gangland factions. Using brains as well as considerable brawn, he is a fascinating character, constantly juggling the often-unrealistic demands of his employers. In the first riveting episode he is in damage control trying to cover the bloody tracks of Conrad’s arrogant grandson Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) after he stabbed someone in a nightclub brawl. The quickness of his criminal mind, always one step ahead of the law.
By focusing on knife violence, an abhorrent act of annihilation on the increase in the UK, the show garners a gravitas and urgency beyond mere entertainment. Which, with actors like Hardy, Mirren and Brosnan, this show effortlessly does. MobLand may constantly call back to a long-lasting legacy of British gangster cinema and television, but it remains a thrilling modern entry in the genre. How could it not be with that cast?
