It’s ‘MobLand,’ Innit?

Does the world need another show about the London underground crime world? No. Do we want it? Yes, with a bullet hole at the bottom of the exclamation point. Paramount+’s MobLand brings together a cadre of A-listers, including Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Tom Hardy, for another peek behind the velvet curtain of British organized crime. The series centers on Harry as he zips around London cleaning up Harrigan messes: negotiating high-stakes drug deals, smoothing over hospital bribes, and silencing problems that end up in the morgue. One major issue? The spoiled Harrigan grandson, who gets in over his head partying with a rival crime family’s kid. When one of them doesn’t come home, things spiral. Harry’s left to track the fallout while the Harrigans quietly move chess pieces in the background.

What sets MobLand apart is the dynamic between Brosnan and Mirren as the power couple behind the Harrigan crime family. Brosnan plays it cool — the kind of guy who made it to the top by being colder than the next, but it’s Mirren’s Meave who steals scenes. She’s precise, brutal, and deeply calculating,  the kind of villain who lets her husband think he’s in charge. What’s most compelling is the emotional codependence between their characters,  morally intertwined, almost to a fault, which sets the stage for a betrayal that feels inevitable. It’s also fascinating to see the evolution of Brosnan, who for decades has subsided in the shadows of his time as James Bond. He’s got the perfect asshole gravitas to make a villain believable — especially in a world where survival is the only rule.

But Mirren’s Maeve, she’s just something else. As the MobLand  tory unfolds, you see how manipulating and cold Maeve is. She has her vision of what the Harrigans should or could be, but she’s psychotic compared with Brosnan’s Connor.

The trope is a regular fixture in film and TV, and for lovers of the genre like me, there’s always a craving to see those complicated moments of humanity in the underworld. And when you’ve got a stacked lineup under the direction of Guy Ritchie—the genre’s unofficial mayor—you’ve gotta at least check it out.

Hardy knows this world well; half his career lives in the criminal underbell and his role as Harry, the family’s loyal fixer, is reliably watchable. As MobLand unwraps its secrets, it reveals a deeply-twisted world of cons, and Harry trying to help his maid while keeping a gang war from killing his family. At first, I was expecting the usual Ritchie cool, characters with a lot to say and drenched in swagger, but instead, show creator Ronan Bennett has given us his own vision of how people talk. But he’s also mixed the realities of being married to a gangster in a different twist of a narrative that doesn’t feel glib.

 MobLand stakes out a world that deeply, intentionally blurs the lines between good and bad. There are comical moments, like Harry telling a guy who he just stabbed that he’s also marked for murder, schedule permitting, while another moment, he’s discussing couple’s therapy with his wife.

Ritchie’s direction brings his usual pop and pacing, backed by a killer soundtrack that nails the underworld vibe. London’s steel and soot are gloriously on display, baked into the atmosphere of every scene as Harry tries to undo one fuckup at a time. The show first with real-world nuance, introducing many characters as a thin sketch while given others some room to breath. Everyone within MobLand seems capable of doing something either really ballsy or really stupid, so we’ll see how that pans out for these folks. There are people you hate (the grandson), people you root for (Harry), and a host of others somewhere in between.

There’s also a meta-fascination in watching Ritchie jump into TV. Maybe it’s because streaming gives him room to play in ways feature films no longer allow, not unless someone’s wearing tights or carrying a lightsaber. Down here in the world of limited series, gangsters still roam free. And with a cast this good, it’s refreshing to watch Hardy, Brosnan, and Mirren flex without the burden of IP.

 MobLand is proof that not everything has to belong to a multiverse to be worth watching. MobLand isn’t Peaky Binders and it’s not The Sopranos, it’s more aligned with the gritty realities of those works on the streets and given the world we’ve inherited recently, maybe crime does pay better than a straight job you could lose over a political pen stroke. MobLandasks the viewer to see how bad things happen but, more precisely, how comprehensive networks that don’t ask questions, just take the envelope of cash, erase those bad things from history.

MobLand is good crime television. After four episodes, I’m hooked. Maeve is unlikable, same as her grandson. Harry is too likable and everyone else finds themselves trapped in the chess game. With this kind of show, the higher the body count, the better the entertainment.