If you had any question what MobLand is all about, the new Paramount+ series quickly clears up any confusion with a hail of bullets and a high body count.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The new crime drama’s cold open finds fixer Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy) trying to broker peace between two rival gangs. He gathers 10 or so men in a London restaurant’s backroom and convinces them to shake hands. The criminals reluctantly accept the arrangement, but they refuse to apologize to each other.
This half measure isn’t good enough for Harry’s boss Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan), who’s upstairs enjoying a nice meal in the establishment’s dining room. After offering Harry an eloquent apple orchard analogy, he orders him to prune the rotten fruit. This results in Harry returning to the meeting with two of his own hired guns and slaughtering both gangs. Conrad then arrives to finish the job, crushing one of the near-dead victim’s throats with his expensive shoe.
Pierce Brosnan as Conrad Harrigan in ‘MobLand’. Luke Varley/Paramount+
With that bit of nasty business out of the way, we jump to a pair of hard-partying lads — Tommy Stevenson (Felix Edwards) and Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) — getting up to no good in East Ender. We quickly learn the two should not be hanging out together, as they belong to rival crime families. Eddie is Conrad’s grandson, a cocky rich kid who thinks nothing of stabbing someone in a club after a minor argument.
The bloody altercation brings all kinds of chaos, scaring off Tommy in the process. When Eddie catches up with his freaked-out friend outside, Harrigan brushes off the incident, tosses his blade into the Thames, and tells Tommy he’ll make it up to him. The two take off into the night.
The next morning, we catch up with Conrad at his mansion in the English countryside. He has summoned his childhood friend Archie (Alex Jennings), who has just brokered a new deal to boost the family business’ heroin trade. Conrad’s happy with the news, but he also wants to expand into fentanyl dealing. Archie bristles at this suggestion, warning it could start a war with Richie Stevenson, Harrigan’s rival.
When we return to Harry, he’s taking a call from Kevin Harrigan (Paddy Considine), who is Conrad’s son and Eddie’s dad. Kevin’s got a “situation.” Eddie came home the previous night covered in blood. Harry shifts into high gear, doing what he does best. First, he intimidates the club owner into erasing the CCTV footage of the stabbing; next, he intimidates the victim himself, visiting him in the hospital with a threat to stab him properly if he cooperates with the police. Finally, Harry uses his connections to have Eddie’s bloodied clothes hidden in a coffin that’s about to be buried.
Paddy Considine as Kevin Harrigan and Pierce Brosnan as Conrad Harrigan in ‘MobLand’. Luke Varley/Paramount+
But it seems the previous night’s problems are far from fixed. We next meet Richie (Geoff Bell), who has learned from his worried wife that not only was their son Tommy hanging out with that no-good Eddie Harrigan the night before, but he never returned home.
Richie responds by getting on the horn with Kevin, demanding to know where his son is. But Eddie has already lied to his dad, denying that he even hung out with Tommy. So aside from a few choice expletives, Kevin has nothing to share with Richie. But Stevenson doesn’t buy it. He’s heard that the Harrigans are getting into the fentanyl biz and thinks they could be using his son as a pawn to make a play on Richie.
In between watching this brewing mob war unfold, we briefly meet Jan Da Souza (Joanne Froggatt), Harry’s wife. She’s apparently combating some long-simmering stress by taking a primal therapy class and getting drinks with Alice (Emily Barber), a woman she just met at the session. We later catch up with Jan at home, where she’s helping her daughter with homework. We learn that the source of her anxiety is Harry, who owes her an apology for an argument he doesn’t remember the specifics of. She wants him to attend couple’s therapy. Harry reluctantly agrees to go to one session.
While Jan’s trying to repair her marriage, Harry’s still trying to fix Conrad’s escalating situation. He calls Eddie to get the truth about his violent night on the town with Tommy, but the kid still denies hanging out with the Stevenson boy. Harry tells Eddie’s mom, Bella (Lara Pulver), to make sure her son does not leave the house.
Conrad and Harry decide a meeting should be set up with Richie before things get out of hand. They schedule a sit-down at Moody’s, an old boxing gym that’ll serve as a mutual safe spot. Before they meet, Harry stages his two heavies, Zosia (Jasmine Jobson) and Kiko (Antonio González Guerrero) — his hired guns from the episode’s opening — outside the gym just in case things go south.
At the face-to-face, Richie demands to speak with Eddie in person. Harry denies the request, but promises to get to the bottom of things. The rival crime boss gives him until noon the next day to find out what has happened to his son. Harry agrees to the timeline, but then puts in a secret call to Conrad. He asks the Harrigan patriarch if he wants him to take out Richie right now, just to be safe. With Richie in Kiko’s crosshairs and the clock ticking, Conrad asks his wife, Maeve (Helen Mirren), to make the decision.
(L-R): Helen Mirren as Maeve Harrigan, Pierce Brosnan as Conrad Harrigan, and Anson Boon as Eddie Harrigan in ‘MobLand’. Luke Varley/Paramount+
Following a darkly comedic exchange, in which Conrad explains to Maeve the difference between “stick or twist” (also the episode’s title) in regard to deciding Richie’s fate, she tells her husband to spare him… for now.
While Richie survives the day, another character isn’t so lucky. With the episode drawing to a close, we return to the Harrigan estate. Conrad is holding a meeting, which includes family and “family.” His daughter Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon) and son Brendan (Daniel Betts) arrive, along with Kevin, Archie, and Conrad’s lawyer.
Before the group gathering in the living room, Maeve warns Conrad that they have a traitor in their midst. She tells him to watch Archie’s reaction when the F-word is mentioned. At the meeting, Conrad announces his decision to expand the family empire into the lucrative fentanyl trade. Archie, again, objects to this idea.
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Conrad excuses himself to the bathroom, while Maeve approaches Archie and calls him out on his betrayal. When Conrad returns, he kneels before Archie, holds his old friend’s hands, and asks his wife if she’s certain about her allegations.
“Stick or twist, baby, stick or twist,” she coldly replies. To the shock of everyone else in the room, Conrad pulls out a pistol and shoots Archie point-blank in the chest.
Executing his childhood friend clearly upsets him. As the episode ends, Maeve attempts to comfort Conrad, gently putting her hand on his arm while he holds back tears. But he flinches, pulling away and shouting, “Get your f—ing hands off of me, woman!”
