In 'MobLand,' Maeve Loves to Watch the World Burn

Spoilers

MobLand, through three episodes, is doing what Dope Thief (on Apple TV+) couldn’t manage after the second: keeping the tension wound tight. Harry (Tom Hardy), the Harrigan family’s fixer, keeps running into new roadblocks as he tries to head off a war between the Harrigans and the Stevensons.

Last week’s episode left Harry in a bind: Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell, who looks like British Ed O’Neill) gave the Harrigans a deadline to produce his son, Tommy. But Tommy turned up dead — hacked to pieces by a club manager, Valjon, wrapped in plastic, and stuffed in a chest. Valjon confessed to Harry that he did the butchering on behalf of Eddie Harrigan, that entitled little sociopath, who stabbed Tommy 50 or 60 times simply because he felt like it. Maeve (Helen Mirren), the Harrigan family matriarch, thought that was just delightful. The rest of the family? Less so. No one besides Maeve has much appetite for going to war with the Stevensons.

But Richie didn’t wait for an excuse. This week, he kick-started the war by blowing up Kevin Harrigan’s house (luckily empty at the time) and sending two goons to take out Harry. Harry, being Harry, warned the goons that if they touched him or his family, their loved ones would be dead within 24 hours. It bought him just enough time to stash his wife, Jan (Joanne Froggatt), and daughter on the houseboat of a begrudging old mate — but not before Jan reminded him about a meeting later that day.

That meeting? Not mob-related at all. It was on behalf of Harry’s cleaning lady, who needed help getting her mother into an assisted living facility. Even while juggling mob wars, Harry found the time to negotiate with the facility manager — offering to send in a plumber and glazier in exchange for bumping the maid’s mother up the waitlist. But while there, Harry clocked something important: an abusive prison guard from his past now living comfortably in the facility. Something tells me that room’s going to open up soon.

Meanwhile, Harry brought Kevin to meet Valjon, who told Kevin exactly what Eddie did to Tommy. Kevin was furious and called his father, Conrad (Pierce Brosnan), expecting him to rip Eddie a new one. But Maeve, gleeful as ever, talked Conrad down. She’s thrilled with Eddie for recklessly endangering the entire family.

Harry, always in fixer mode, hatched a plan. He and Kevin played good-cop, bad-cop with Valjon — already beaten half to death — convincing him to take the fall for Tommy’s murder in exchange for the safety of his children. Valjon had no real choice. After ditching Detective Fisk, Harry handed Valjon over to Richie, who shot him twice but kept him alive. Richie promised a very thorough interrogation, and if Valjon’s story didn’t hold, the war would escalate.

Maeve, of course, wouldn’t mind a war. In fact, she seems to crave it. She and Conrad took a sauna together to strategize, with Maeve suggesting they should kill Richie’s wife, Vron (Annie Cooper), just to inflict maximum pain. Conrad put a pin in that for now, giving Harry time to clean up the mess.

We also learned that Maeve isn’t fond of her stepdaughter, Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon) — probably because she’s a reminder of Conrad’s indiscretion with a lap dancer. Maeve seems to prefer the Harrigan screw-ups, Eddie and Brendan, over Seraphina, who was approached this week by Brendan about a potential deal. Conrad told her to hear Brendan out, but under no circumstances to give that “gobshite” anything.

But the Harrigans have another problem brewing: Detective Fisk, thanks to an anonymous tip, has found the body of Conrad’s old friend Archie, who was executed by Conrad back in the premiere and hidden in someone else’s casket. Whoever made that call is going to have Harry to deal with soon. I suspect there’s a mole in the Harrigan circle. I just hope it’s not Kevin, because I’ll be devastated if anything happens to Paddy Considine, one of my all-time favorite character actors.

One last thread this week: Kevin’s wife, Bella (Lara Pulver), tried to blackmail her estranged father, the Prime Minister, by videotaping him offering a bribe to her client, Antoine. But Antoine turned it on Bella, keeping the footage to blackmail her. If she doesn’t pay up, he’ll turn the video over to her dad. Bella called in Harry for help, but not before once again trying to seduce him. There’s clearly some history there, and while Bella seems eager to reignite it, Harry is (for now) trying to repair his marriage to Jan.

And that’s where things stand. My guess? Valjon won’t hold up well under Richie’s interrogation, and the war between the Harrigans and Stevensons will escalate next week, likely putting poor Vron directly in the crosshairs. A shame, really, since even Maeve and Conrad think she’s great company. More importantly, I’m hoping the one genuinely good person in this show, Harry’s maid, gets that spot in the care facility for her mom. Let’s see Harry use his powers for something that isn’t pure damage control for once.