Tom Hardy can be very persuasive. In Taboo, people did what he said because he’d growled something intimidatingly gothic at them; in Locke, they knew he’d only phone back later if they didn’t give in; in the Kray brothers biopic Legend, there were two Tom Hardys and they were both holding claw hammers. Whenever he’s the celebrity reader on CBeebies Bedtime Stories, meanwhile, half of the adults watching wouldn’t need any persuading.
The idea that a Tom Hardy character cajoling, threatening or influencing someone is an art form in itself is the core of MobLand, a decent new gangster epic that casts Hardy as top fixer Harry Da Souza. Harry works for the Harrigans, the Irish clan who dominate the London drugs and guns scene, but who are prone to excess and perhaps not as savvy as they once were. Their charming, clinical lieutenant Harry cleans up their messes.
Problem one in episode one is that spoiled wild child Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) has been on a bender which ended with the stabbing of a geezer in a nightclub – “I gave him a plunge,” says Eddie, his voice too plummy to pull off hardman vernacular – and which could cause the perennial tension between the Harrigans and cockney crime dynasty the Stevensons to develop into a properly naughty war. Harry has to bring Eddie to heel, placate enemy kingpin Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell), and either sweet-talk or scare witnesses to the knifing, according to whether he wants them to share information or keep stumm. Then he ambles back to his luxury Thames-view apartment, where his neglected wife, Jan (Joanne Froggatt), demands he sign up for couples counselling – but before she can finish her list of grievances, Harry’s phone goes off and he’s reporting for duty again.
Hardy’s charisma here is made of confidence and competence: Harry is a guy whose strong hands sort things out. “If I say I’m going to do something,” he says, when his reliability is questioned, “it gets done.” MobLand’s writer/creator Ronan Bennett is interested in organised crime as a business that runs on common sense and people management: while the Harrigans make the big decisions, the workaholic Harry liaises with their industry’s toothless regulator (the police), disciplines errant staff members and implements the odd, rather sudden, redundancy. Harry is essentially a resourceful, well-connected executive, so Hardy gives him a penetrating articulacy, only occasionally flecked with the rough grit Harry must have had in his days as a foot soldier.
“Right now, I am in first gear,” says a gun-wielding Harry to two toerags who think they’re hard enough to not do what he tells them. Hardy delivers the punchline – “Would you like to see me shift to sixth?” so calmly that he’s barely audible, which is awfully close to hilarious. But Bennett and Hardy are willing to lean in to Harry’s comic potential, as when he tells another small-time crook what will happen if he crosses the Harrigans: “I, or possibly one of my associates, depending on my availability, will find you.”
The Harrigans are fun, too. There’s the boss, Conrad, a wax-jacketed nouveau aristocrat who spits on his hands and claps when he receives good news, or murders people when he doesn’t. What may be mistaken for an erratic performance by Pierce Brosnan is an attempt to embody a dangerously erratic man. Then there’s the real boss, Conrad’s omniscient wife, Maeve (Helen Mirren), and their son Kevin (Paddy Considine), Eddie’s dad, whose missing ruthless streak means he’s constantly professionally cuckolded by Harry, who is not blood but is the favoured child.
If MobLand sounds like a more sophisticated take on the cartoon gangster shenanigans of a Guy Ritchie film, that’s what it is: Ritchie directs the first two episodes. You expect either to dismiss a new Ritchie project as crass twaddle, or to quietly chide yourself for enjoying something that probably is crass twaddle, but has been made with enough mischief and flair for you to stop fussing and have a good time. This, however, isn’t in either category.
Ritchie’s direction is … pretty good. Accomplished. Smooth. He flexes various muscles he has built up in previous work, as he takes us to old-school boxing gyms and flat-roofed Isle of Dogs boozers, gentleman’s clubs and Cotswolds estates. We’re tasting jellied eels in one mouthful and caviar in the next, the point being that successful criminals often achieve a level of wealth they were not born to handle.
Aside from that, and some indications that Maeve’s power comes from having learned to weaponise the dark perversities of the men in her life, there’s not much of the psychological depth that a premium mob saga runs on. But if you ever start thinking MobLand isn’t worth your time, Tom Hardy will be along shortly to convince you otherwise.
