Stream On! ‘MobLand’ on Paramount+ is high-dollar swag
Two mob families clash in a war that threatens to topple empires and lives.
MobLand is a new UK crime drama television series created by Ronan Bennett, who is set to write the entire series. The series began as The Donovans, an origin story to the Showtime series Ray Donovan, which would have been swell. As the story was further developed it was reworked as a stand-alone story unrelated to Ray Donovan. The ensemble series stars Tom Hardy (Band of Brothers) as Harry, a fixer for a crime family led by Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren (1923).
/Streaming /Amazon Prime /🍅79% 🍿70% /Trailer /2025 /TVMA
The series premiered on March 30, 2025, on Paramount+. Three episodes are online as of this writing.
Harry Da Souza (Hardy), the Harrigan crime family's fixer, meets with Mehmet and Costas, two feuding gangs, to mediate a truce. Patriarch Conrad Harrigan (Brosnan) has ordered Harry to eliminate both parties if the negotiations fail. Is Conrad pragmatic or nuts?
Meanwhile, Conrad’s grandson Eddie (Anson Boon) engages in a reckless night out with Tommy Stevenson (Felix Edwards), son of rival boss Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell). They go to a club, where they get into an altercation with another patron, whom Eddie stabs before he takes off. Harry finds and meets with Eddie to discuss the stabbing. He successfully coerces the club owner into erasing the CCTV footage and intimidates the stabbing victim into withholding information from the police.
Tom Hardy is kinetic as Harry the Fixer. His mantra is “I’ll be right there!” (Oddly, he resembles Jeremy Renner, who is playing a fixer in Taylor Sheridan’s Mayor of Kingstown. Come to that, Hardy also resembles Paul Muni.) The first two episodes are directed by the English master of crime, Guy Ritchie, and the storytelling is expert.
The cast contains pedigreed A-listers (not to mention Guy Ritchie), so we can reckon that lots of money has been spent, and it shows. The interestingly dark cinematography, the dialogue, rich with what I suppose is English crime slang, in fact, all of the components, add up to an entertaining binge. To what do you suppose “grass” refers (and it’s not what you think)?
Kevin Harrigan, Eddie's father, calls Harry to say that Richie has been calling him non-stop. Harry meets with Zosia and Kiko to plan to kill Richie.
Meanwhile, Conrad invites his stepdaughter, Seraphina, son Brendan, longtime advisor Archie (Alex Jennings, The Crown), Conrad's lawyer and Kevin to a meeting. At the meeting, Conrad announces his decision to expand the family empire into the lucrative fentanyl trade. Archie objects to this idea. Conrad excuses himself to the bathroom, while Maeve approaches Archie and calls him out on his “betrayal.” To the shock of everyone else in the room, Conrad returns, pulls out a pistol and shoots Archie point-blank in the chest. (Another clean-up job for Harry. One of his helpers points out that Conrad and Archie had been mates since the ’seventies. Why did Conrad do it? Harry the philosopher replies, “You know what, there are so many variables and occurrences which happen on a daily basis throughout the universe, it is not for us to wonder what happened; it is only for us to bring me plastic and a bag.”) It’s starting to remind me of Macbeth.
Unanswered questions are piling up like bodies. We spend some time with Harry’s weary wife (played by Joanne Froggatt) and daughter (Teddie Allen). Harry doesn’t need the stress they’re bringing.
Pierce Brosnan, who played James Bond for a time, seems to be having fun with loose-cannon Conrad and Helen Mirren gets a chance to really shine in Episode Two.
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I’ve watched three episodes, and can say that the action—and “good craziness”—is ramping up with each episode. The twists are rivaling Fargo, of which I was briefly reminded; but Mobland is more than that: it’s an original feat of storytelling. I’m looking forward to Episode Four on April 20.
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Sources include Wikipedia (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License)
Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon's prices. This column originally appeared on The Outer Banks Voice.