MobLand Season Premiere Review: Move Over Ray Donovan, Harry Da Souza Is the New Fixer in Town

Critic’s Rating: 4.25 / 5.0

4.25

What a wickedly awesome premiere.

Why am I so fascinated by mob dramas when I overtly hate crime in general? Ask me to watch Breaking Bad, and I’ll turn you down. Ask me to watch Goodfellas, and I’ll jump on the couch.

There’s something within the cultural zeitgeist that even for me makes it OK to enjoy a good mob drama. MobLand is more than just a mob drama, though. 

First, the cast is impeccable. Tom Hardy plays Harry Da Souza, a fixer for the Harrigan family, which is led by Conrad and Maeve Harrigan, played by Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren. I’d sign up to watch this trio do pretty much anything.

Thankfully, I don’t have to put that to the test. MobLand Season 1 Episode 1 grabbed my attention immediately. It started fast and furious, and ended a little less fast, but no less furious.

We’re dealing with the baddest of the bad, who also happen to have plucky senses of humor all around. Even when things are spiraling out of control, someone says something that makes you chuckle.

Once the first character cleanse was finished, I realized why Harry Da Souza felt so familiar. He reminded me of Ray Donovan.

Look, I admit that I often forget important facts because I consume more entertainment information than I can sometimes process. So, yes, I had forgotten or entirely missed that MobLand began as an idea to explore Ray Donovan’s family line.

It was set to be a prequel, but along the way, they cut those ties and created two warring families for the fixer to be involved with — the Harrigans and the Stevensons. 

Even with those severed ties, Harry felt a lot like Ray. I wouldn’t ordinarily put Tom Hardy and Liev Schreiber in the same acting category, but when you put Harry and Ray together, you can definitely sense some similarities.

In this role, Hardy feels as though he’s holding back, and I expect the character may change as the season progresses. I don’t know, as I haven’t seen it. I have the second episode, but decided to filter my thoughts here before watching.

Harry proves his worth to the family after Eddie Harrigan, grandson of Conrad and Maeve, goes out for a night on the town with Richie Stevenson’s grandson, Tommy. Eddie makes a spectacle of himself by badly stabbing a clubgoer, and Tommy never returns home.

And when I say it was a bad stabbing, I mean just that. Harry has little regard for the lousy job Eddie did. If Eddie had stabbed the guy well, further conversations wouldn’t have been necessary.

After watching the whole hour, I’m not entirely sure that Eddie wasn’t doing his grandfather a favor by taking out Tommy. I don’t know if Tommy is dead or alive, either. But since the two families do not associate and Conrad is on the brink of interceding on Richie’s fentanyl business, it’s a bit suspect.

So far, Eddie seems like a tool, a wealthy kid who has never wanted anything in his life. If he was working on behalf of his grandfather to shake things up, he probably did it on his own.

Still, Conrad didn’t seem like he knew what Eddie was up to when he got wind of it. If he did, he played Harry like a fiddle. If anyone was playing anyone like a fiddle, though, I’d give that honor to Maeve.

Harry had already proven he was worth his weight in gold when, in the opening scene, he bargained an unsuccessful truce with some of the Harrigan family’s business cohorts. While they were expecting a handshake deal as an uneasy stopgap, the whole room was mowed down with an array of bullets.

Harry ordered the cleanup, and they were on to the next issue. But who knows what was happening behind the scenes? 

Harry has a good name in the business. Richie trusted him when he said he’d personally ask Eddie what he knew about Tommy. I’m just not so sure the family won’t be working against Harry, too, when push comes to shove.

The Harrigans keep him incredibly busy, but he probably does his job exceptionally well for the same reasons everyone else does what he wants. If he doesn’t, the Harrigans will find someone else to take care of him.

The gist of the story so far is that Richie runs fentanyl while Conrad and Maeve have heroin and guns. They want fentanyl, but nobody believes they have the stones to take it. 

Conrad seems torn. He had the perfect opportunity to take out Richie Stevenson and his guys, but he couldn’t take it, and while Maeve pulled those strings with her Stick or Twist response, she hesitated.

Her hesitation had nothing to do with the business, but rather a desire to be front and center when Richie Stevenson goes down. It’s pretty clear who is in charge, and it’s not Conrad.

Did Maeve really have the drop on Cousin Archie? Was he stepping out on the family and playing traitor? He would have had to be a first-rate idiot to do it. 

The feeling I got as Conrad put the Twist to him was that Archie was just a dumb lout who got caught in the inner workings of the family business, perhaps becoming the motivating factor to begin the war.

Mirren is simply delicious when she’s ornery, and she never hesitated, even when Conrad growled at her after the family meeting. She knew exactly what she was doing, and Conrad fell into her trap.

Harry has his hands full with this crowd, and his family situation isn’t doing him any favors, either. He’s so busy with the Harrigans that his own family languishes, and his wife Jan (Joanne Froggett) wants him to make amends.

I hope the story continues to focus on Harry first and the Harrigans second. It’s far more interesting to watch a “regular” family man maneuver between warring families than it is to spend time with the families themselves.

That’s not to say that their antics aren’t worth the effort, but Harry will offer a more nuanced perspective. 

I’m already hooked. The Harrigans are scary as hell, even if it seems like the natural progression of their menace skipped a generation (Kevin and the others seem rather normal, right?). I expect they’ll show us a very good time.

And Harry? He’s extremely capable, but he’s also not a Harrigan. He holds all of their secrets and cleans their messes, but if cousin Archie was expendable, Harry could be too.

What did you think of the premiere? Did you warm up to the characters quickly, or do you need some more time to acclimate?

MobLand will be my Kin replacement. The AMC+ series was yanked from the lineup before the second season aired in the US, and I’ll never forgive them for that. Paramount+ has offered a perfect counter, and I’m here for it.

Watch MobLand Online