The most interesting, hysterical aspects of the Guy Ritchie-produced crime drama MobLandstem from the marital tension between Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) and Maeve Harrigan (Helen Mirren), the heads of a gangster clan in London. In the penultimate episode of the show’s first season, which aired May 25, the two get into one of their many evocative fights. While sweating it off in the sauna of their luxurious English manor (he’s shirtless, and she’s in a bathrobe), they bicker because he’s invited a younger woman over for a meal. “Do you want to ride her?” she asks him in a thick Irish accent that’s hard to take seriously even for a second. He denies this, claiming he wants only to suss out if this new family friend of sorts is spying on them. “Want to strip her bare and find a wire?” Maeve continues, ending the chat by pointing to her powerful husband’s balls, threatening that he’ll “lose them” if he tries anything. To make matters funnier, Conrad looks down and sighs, partly in frustration and partly as if relieved to find his body parts still intact.
Paramount+’s thriller, created by The Day Of The Jackal‘s Ronan Bennett, is littered with these kinds of delirious conversations between this toxic couple. Each one is constantly trying to outdo the other when it comes to being the worst, scariest, and most exhausting person and parent. That aforementioned pre-finale outing, “Beggars Banquet,” ends with another banger of a clash between them. Seated at the dinner table, Maeve keeps things awkward as ever by prattling on about how handling a man’s penis is similar to using eggs (yes, really). Some of her family members, employees, and a few others try to digest her speech along with the food on their plates. And then Conrad bangs his fists, doles out insults, and screams about his wife being traitorous in an unfortunately funny and distracting Kerry tone. It’s a sight to behold whenever Brosnan and Mirren’s characters go at each other’s throats like this.
As droll as their dialogue might be, the series’ true power lies in both actors’ commitment to not holding back in their deliveries, especially when it comes to those intonations. If this seems like an exaggerated claim, then keep watching until the end of “Beggar’s Banquet,” when the cops arrest Conrad and Maeve after that massive aforementioned dinnertime blowout. Instead of cowering or continuing their argument, they smirk at each other and loudly, proudly sing Danny Doyle’s Irish folk song “20 Men From Dublin Town” while being handcuffed and put into the police car. Brosnan and Mirren relish an opportunity to musically dial up their accent antics.
The James Bond vet, who is Irish, tries way too hard to make his character sound like he’s from the country’s South-West Region. But these attempts come off as a cartoonish way to heighten the drama for Conrad, who tries to rule with an iron fist. Meanwhile, his legendary co-star also has an atrocious manner of speaking to dial up the histrionics because Maeve is sneakily more vile and power-hungry than her partner. (She’s undoubtedly inspired by Lady Macbeth.) Together, their indulgent and over-the-top performances make MobLand a juicy affair even beyond its twisty, intricate premise and impressive ensemble that includes Tom Hardy, Paddy Considine, Toby Jones, and Joanne Froggatt.
It’s noteworthy that Hardy isn’t responsible for the most jarring accent on the show. Although he has a real ability to wildly adjust his voice (as heard in everything from The Dark Knight Rises to The Revenant and Peaky Blinders), he’s at his calmest here as Harry Da Souza, a fixer for the Harrigans. Loyal to his bosses to a fault, Harry is always kicking their enemies to the curb (either with violence or monologues) and saving Conrad and Maeve’s unruly offspring from all kinds of danger, while also trying to keep his own marriage afloat. No matter what Harry does—meeting with criminal masterminds, pushing a source off a rooftop, or lecturing the buffoonish Harrigan grandchild who’s hooking up with his teen daughter—Hardy sticks to a very chill decibel to deliver his lines. And in MobLand, he’s given the room to drill into his flawed character’s pathos.
Contrary to that, Brosnan and Mirren play goofy antagonists with no room to grow emotionally.(In season one, Maeve plots the murder of her step-daughter, and it’s revealed that Conrad has slept with his daughter-in-law.) These two fucked-up characters are menacing and love to curse—and you’d better keep the subtitles on to grasp most of what they’re dishing out. But that’s what makes the duo’s complicated dynamic so damn fun. In a year with some notable accents on TV, like the Southern drawls in The White Lotus, Kaitlyn Dever’s Australian timbre in Apple Cider Vinegar, and Nicole Kidman’s toned-down take on Russian in Nine Perfect Strangers, Brosnan and Mirren really go for it in MobLand.
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