Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | April 4, 2025
After this Sunday’s 1923 finale, Taylor Sheridan has no new television seasons on the horizon after dominating Paramount+ for the better part of the last year. The streamer is filling the gap with MobLand, a Guy Ritchie-produced series starring Tom Hardy. The show comes from Ronan Bennett, the writer behind Christian Slater’s Public Enemies and Peacock’s surprisingly well-received The Day of the Jackal, which I skipped because we all know that Eddie Redmayne can steal souls through television screens.
In MobLand, Hardy plays Harry Da Souza, a fixer for the Harrigans, a London crime family led by Conrad Harrigan — played by Pierce Brosnan with equal parts menace and charm — and his wife Maeve, a Lady Macbeth type perfectly portrayed by Helen Mirren. Maeve calls the shots, and Conrad executes them, and yes, I mean that literally.
Da Souza kicks off the series by killing the heads of several rival cartels at Conrad’s request. That’s the stew these characters are swimming in, but the real meat — at least for now — is a brewing war between the Harrigans and the Stevensons after the reckless and entitled Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) possibly (probably) kills Tommy Stevenson during a night of clubbing. Eddie’s an entitled little sh**, but his father Kevin (Paddy Considine, hell yes!) brings in Harry to clean up the mess.
Harry’s great at his job, but it’s clearly taking a toll on his marriage to Jan (Joanne Froggatt), who’s increasingly desperate to get him into counseling. The stakes are sky-high, but Harry stays cool whether he’s navigating spousal tension or performing cold-blooded hits. You can almost hear “It’s just a job” echoing in his head.
At least in the premiere, it’s a solid crime drama. I especially like that the spark for the inter-family conflict is a spoiled dipsh** the audience immediately loathes — someone the sympathetic lead still has to protect for the sake of a family that’s as dangerous as it is eccentric.
MobLand was originally conceived as a Ray Donovan spin-off. Somewhere along the line, it was reworked as a standalone series, with Guy Ritchie brought in to direct several episodes, including the pilot. Tonally and visually, it plays like an episode of Ray Donovan filtered through Ritchie’s lens, and frankly, he might be more prolific than Ryan Murphy these days. He’s certainly more talented. The cast also includes Janet McTeer and Sons of Anarchy’s Tommy Flanagan, among a usual cadre of character actors one expects to see in a British crime drama.
It’s a promising start — the show even has a faint sense of humor — and should hold down that Sunday night slot nicely for Paramount+ (opposite The Last of Us) while Taylor Sheridan works on the next Yellowstone spin-off to keep his ranch in business.
