Westies Review – This New York crime drama is like Peaky Blinders meets The Sopranos | Television

The Peaky Blinders effect remains. More than a decade after Tommy Shelby’s debut, TV still loves the real-life gang, especially with Blinders creator Steven Knight recently revisiting the reality-based spoof with A Thousand Stripes. What other past IRL teams are still available? All the while, the Westies, an Irish-American gang operating in 1980s New York in a complicated alliance with the Italian-American Gambino crime family, were there. It’s the Irish mafia and the real mafia in a two-on-one partnership.

Along with co-creator Michael Panes, the man who found this opening goal in the making of Peaky Sopranos is Chris Brancato, an actor whose resume includes Narcos and Harlem’s finest Godfather. They are the strongest players in the game, The Westies are… OK. That’s fine. That’s great! What do you want from me, eh? I said it was good.

JK Simmons and Eamon Sweeney, the leader of the Westies. Sweeney works outside of a small house that is being built in Hell’s Kitchen, because – as he helpfully explains near the beginning of the first episode, to a person on the ground who already knows this – he took action to ensure that his Irish workers, not the most powerful Italians, have a piece of the million-dollar construction project. To keep the kickbacks flowing, Sweeney had to keep the Gambinos sweet.

Two problems: The young Irish-Americans who work as Sweeney’s stooges are violent, drunk, and the Italians are equally violent and impulsive whether they’ve been on vino or not. From the bloody chaos that inevitably comes with two potential new leaders. On the Italian side is future mafia star John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headley), who doesn’t see why he should be with the Irish at all. For the Irish people, Jimmy Roarke (Tom Brittney, unknown as the brother who played the hot vicar in Grantchester) is Sweeney’s brightest lieutenant, but he pulls on the other side with his boss and is most loyal to his friend Mickey Flanagan (Stanley Morgan), who likes to dance but is free in Vietnam. electroconvulsive therapy. While away, Mickey misses the memo not to mess with the Italians.

In the most prominent roles are NYPD officer Glenn Keenan, a debilitated gambler and drinker played by the flamboyant Titus Welliver, whose shiny silver and black mustache give him the look of a black-and-white portrait of a depressed cockatoo; and Jimmy’s friend Bridget Walsh (Sarah Bolger), a well-meaning group that helps with the Westies’ business but is more concerned with the fight for Irish independence, which is why he advances on his own but now campaigns far away. When her ex-boyfriend Brendan Cahill (Allen Leech) comes to ask for a favor, Bridget must decide whether to get involved again.

The show has an interest in fathers and sons, most notably in the story of Keenan, a lost widower who deliberately tries to prevent his teenage son, Danny (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong), from being drawn to the life of the Westies. The fact that Sweeney is childless may be her problem, as her instinct to find a child born to Jimmy is no substitute for reality.

The Westies are at their best when it comes to social entertainment, as they play boxing for laughs and enjoy riding with the Roarke brothers as they cut them in half and set evil intentions. A flurry of questionable decisions leads to the dismemberment of an unpleasant corpse in the back room of a store, followed by a tall cup and a severed hand; the observation of the boys at the night club where the Colombians hide their cocaine HQ – coke being a business that will be taken over by a new generation of criminals, who will push their elders aside to take the new wealth – culminates in brutal violence.

The worst times are when The Westies can’t distinguish themselves. Simmons brings a powerful optimism that never quite arrives, his efforts to give Sweeney the soft, jaded, robbed boss of the fear he needs. Allan-Headley, meanwhile, struggles a lot to advance Gotti from a young Mafiosi who wants to be famous: there is no fear when he invites you to sit under the dining table with a red and white cloth so that he can break your balls, because we have seen this man before. Welliver Keenan’s cop is too pathetic and boring to bother with. Most of the supporting players are either random or empty.

The only members who have the power that comes from the determination of their characters are Brittney and Bolger. He gives Roarke the perfect mix of cool and smart, while making Walsh steely and nervous. They are great; but most of The Westies are enough.