In short? These people are interesting. Their relationships are interesting. Their jobs are interesting. Their world is interesting. And most importantly, the way creator Ronan Bennett, co-writer Jez Butterworth, and director Lawrence Gough are depicting all this is, itself, interesting. The deeper we get into the crime shenanigans, the more complex and engaging the characters become.
It’s worth keeping in mind that many shows, even many great shows, start simple and broad before their focus sharpens and their strength increases. Just to cite one extremely mighty example, The Sopranos was always terrific, but it wasn’t until midway through Season 3, during an incident involving Ralph Cifaretto, a stripper named Tracee, and a parking lot, that it truly became THE SOPRANOS. Mad Men was making corny jokes about how “there’s no magic machine that makes copies” in its pilot episode, but by the end of its first season it had created a rivalry storyline between main character Don Draper and his young nemesis Pete Campbell that simply never went where I expected it to go.
Is MobLand either of those shows? I’d say “no, of course not,” but I’m never gonna sell this particular cast short. If someone gave this crew Sopranos-level scripts, I have no doubt they’d nail it. My point is simply that a rising tide lifts all boats, and this episode is a rising tide. The twisty plot, the twisted secrets, the idiosyncratic and engaging lead performance of Tom Hardy, the reliably keen work of everyone else in the cast — there’s something here, I think, something potentially fascinating. And if worse comes to worst, all we get is a fun British gangster show with a crackerjack crew of actors. Every show should be so lucky as to have that for their worst case scenario.
I reviewed this week’s MobLand for Decider.
Tags: decider, mobland, TV, TV reviews