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Mobland

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Five reasons to watch MobLand

News
08 July 2025
Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and more reasons to watch MobLand.
group of people standing around living room looking mildly threatening

If Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren, and Pierce Brosnan as stars of a London family gangster series dreamed up by The Day of the Jackal creator Ronan Bennett aren’t enough reasons to get you to watch MobLand (on M-Net from Thursday 10 July at 21:00), why do you even watch TV?    

The Harrigans are an Irish, London-based crime family who find themselves in a battle with the Stevensons that could end both syndicates – and their lives. Harry Da Souza (Hardy) is a street-smart and formidable fixer employed by the Harrigan family to navigate and mitigate the escalating conflict threatening their empire. As loyalties collide Harry is tasked with protecting the Harrigans' interests and preventing an all-out gang war.

We promised five reasons, so, for the sake of fairness, let’s lead with the headline cast as one reason alone: Alongside Hardy, Brosnan stars as Harrigan family patriarch Conrad, alongside his darkly dangerous wife Maeve (Mirren).

Helen Mirren has both an Academy Award and a BAFTA for Best Actress in a Leading Role, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, a Peabody Award, and a Laurence Olivier Award and Tony Award. Now she plays a scheming psychopath goading her husband into ever-expanding acts of mayhem and violence.

Brosnan has had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame since 1997, has been honoured with the Irish Film and Television Academy Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to Irish Film – and was James Bond. Four times, for goodness’ sake.

Tom Hardy received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) from then-Prince Charles in recognition of his work in film in 2023 and was named Best Actor at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards in 2016 for Mad Max: Fury Road. In the same year, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Revenant. In 2012, he was Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Bane with an OBE. Imagine.

Reason number 2 is the team behind it. There’s a backstory: MobLand started life in February 2024 as The Donovans, a spin-off series loosely based on Showtime’s Ray Donovan. Ronan Bennett was hired to write the series and executive produce alongside Guy Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson, Glasser, Ron Burkle, Bob Yari, and David Hutkin.

In October 2024, an announcement was made that it had been reworked into a standalone series with the working title The Associate, with Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren in final negotiations to star. Production began in November 2024 and Jez Butterworth, Hardy, Dean Baker, and Kris Thykier joined as executive producers. In February 2025, the final title MobLand, was revealed. Oh, and Guy Ritchie directs the first two episodes. No surprise the premiere broke Paramount+'s record for its largest global series launch ever, with 2.2 million viewers.

Thirdly, the score is epic! The show’s music is composed by lead vocalist, guitarist, pianist, and lyricist for the English rock band Muse, Matt Bellamy, and composer Ilan Eshkeri. Us either … Turns out his catalogue of film and TV scores includes Still Alice, Layer Cake, Shaun the Sheep, and David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive. He has collaborated with David Gilmour, Annie Lennox, Take That, and KT Tunstall, amongst others, and recently worked with the European Space Agency on music for astronaut Tim Peake's Principia mission. The first and second episodes feature The Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ and ‘Breathe’.

If you’re not convinced yet, reason number four is the reviews the show received. The Guardian said “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.”

David Opie wrote for Empire that “Our window into this brutal world is Hardy's geezer fixer, who ruthlessly enforces his employers’ wants and needs by threatening, cajoling and killing anyone who gets in the way. But MobLand isn't all just glares and shoot-outs. There are also moments that will make you laugh, intentionally or otherwise, such as when Hardy threatens a nameless nobody with this heavily caveated promise: 'I, or possibly one of my associates, depending on my availability, will find you'.”

Lastly, there’s a second season coming. Showtime/MTV Entertainment President Chris McCarthy announced on 23 June: “With more than 26 million viewers and climbing, MobLand has become a resounding triumph … brought to life by the powerhouse performances of Tom, Pierce, and Helen. We are elated to greenlight a second season of this global phenomenon, which has dominated both domestic and international charts and soared to No. 1 in the UK.” It can cause physical pain to see a show you love so much, get cancelled – and you will love it, and there’ll be no pain because: season 2. Sorted.

Watch MobLand on M-Net (DStv Channel 101) from Thursday 10 July at 21:00. Join the conversation on FacebookXInstagram, and TikTok using #MNet101 and #MobLand.