MobLand is a disappointment

Last year, I wrote a feature for this magazine in which, disturbed by the apparent revival in the British gangster genre, I counseled a degree of caution as to its practitioners’ apparent lack of discernment in their approach to the tropes and clichés of the tradition. “We will be left,” I concluded, “with the cinematic equivalent of bald men fighting over a comb: a boot, stamping on a human face for all eternity, while someone calls someone else ‘a slag.’ It is not, perhaps, the most enticing of prospects.” If the Guy Ritchie-Tom Hardy collaboration MobLand is not as hideous a creation as this suggests, it is also something of a disappointment given the cast and creative talent involved. In its apparent lack of interest in risk-taking, it also represents streaming “content” at its least inspired.

MobLand, which is directed and executive-produced by Ritchie but co-written by Day of the Jackal’s Ronan Bennett and Jerusalem’s Jez Butterworth, takes as its central idea the conflict between two of London’s biggest and nastiest crime families, the Harrigans (led by Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren) and the Stevensons (step forward that fine British character actor Geoff Bell). This is no Romeo and Juliet saga, however. The only connection between the two is firstly a tentative friendship between the families’ scions, the psychotic Eddie Harrigan and the gentler Tommy Stevenson, which is violently disrupted when Eddie gets stab-happy on a debauched night out, and secondly the introduction of the show’s protagonist Harry Da Souza (Hardy), a softly-spoken “fixer” who works for the Harrigans and tends to intervene when a problem needs solving: firstly with words and then, if needs be, with an AK-47 or a knuckleduster. Or both.

If this doesn’t sound a million miles away from a British version of Ray Donovan, that’s unsurprising. The show was originally conceived as a spin-off of the Liev Schreiber vehicle, and has gradually evolved into something more typically Ritchie-esque. Coming as it does so soon on the heels of The Gentlemen TV spin-off – and with another, apparently similarly themed film called Wife and Dog starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Anthony Hopkins in production at the moment – MobLand may be, like Paramount+’s Sexy Beast television series, another installment in Brit gangster clichés too far for audiences. It’s being released weekly, but there’s frankly not enough in the opening installments to grab viewers the way that the filmmakers need to. When Hardy suggests in the first episode “I am in first gear… would you like to see me shift to sixth gear?” the only answer that audiences are likely to come out with is “Yes, and quickly.”

Which is not to say that MobLand is unwatchable, or even unentertaining. Brosnan and Mirren, clearly enjoying the opportunity to cast off hard-won national treasure status, both chew the scenery with gusto – although the British television critic who spent a large part of his review sneering that Drogheda native Brosnan was unable to do a convincing Irish accent should probably be forced to sit down and watch the actor’s breakthrough in the much-ridiculed Taffin – and the presence of the always reliable Paddy Considine and Joanne Froggatt is reassuring. And although a dialed-down Hardy, for once playing a relatively normal human being, takes some getting used to, it’s a pleasure to see this often mannered and challenging actor in another mode from his usual slurring mania.

Still, I am unconvinced that MobLand is going to be much remembered after it concludes, or even that many viewers are going to last until the end of its ten-episode run. Perhaps there is a new way of approaching the British gangster genre, which may have peaked in 1980 with The Long Good Friday (coincidentally also featuring Mirren and Brosnan) and has only inspired imitators ever since, with the splendid exception of Jonathan Glazer’s fine debut Sexy Beast. Wit and poetry and innovation would be invaluable additions to this well-worn species, but as we wait for that, we have to console ourselves instead with Brosnan shooting people in cold blood at point-blank range and Mirren, obviously enjoying herself, giving it her finest Lady Macbeth, via the mean streets of Ireland. And, for an hour’s entertainment, such things are far from unbearable.