Summary
MobLand ratchets up the intensity in Episode 2, delivering several big swerves and a few subtle hints of a much more complicated narrative than it first appeared.
Episode 2 of MobLand is titled “Jigsaw Puzzle”, which is fitting for two reasons. The first is that the thrust of the hour is Harry trying to put together the various disparate parts of a mystery involving Eddie Harrigan, the grandson of nutcase Irish capo Conrad Harrigan, and Tommy Stevenson, the missing son of cockney kingpin Richie. The outcome of this may well result in a gang war. But the second, funnier reason is that by the end of this episode Tommy is found in a case having been chopped up into pieces, reduced to a jigsaw himself.
That’s the kind of morbid humour you’re dealing with in a Guy Ritchie-produced gangland drama, one supposes. I don’t make the rules. Either way, this follow-up takes the basic narrative outline established in the premiere and turns it all up to 11, with country lane car chases and nightclub brawls and that last-minute shocker about Tommy. There’s a lot going on here, including several details that remain inscrutable for now, but if nothing else Tom Hardy is delivering an alarmingly good performance as a man trying to maintain control in a situation rapidly spiraling out of hand. It’ll be fun to see how he handles it all going wrong.
And it will all go wrong, that’s for sure. If nothing else, there’s a traitor in the Harrigan camp. At the end of the premiere Conrad’s wife, Maeve, had convinced him that the traitor was his childhood friend Archie, whom he promptly shot at point-blank range with a Desert Eagle. But I’m not so sure myself. Harry barely has time to clean up the crime scene before he’s hauled into the station by DS Fisk, who is conveniently interested in speaking to Archie. It’s almost as if someone tipped him off about what happened the night before.
Harry is bailed out by the Harrigans’ shark-like lawyer, O’Hara Delaney (played by Lisa Dwan, who you’ll recognize from Top Boy), but being apprehended is the least of his problems. As Richie promises Kevin when he pulls up alongside him, time’s running short. If nobody can give him some answers about where Tommy is, he’ll have no choice but to go after Eddie himself. Which he does almost immediately.
Kevin’s warning to get Eddie out to the Harrigan estate buys him a bit of time, but it’s the quick thinking of Zosia (Jasmine Jobson, also from Top Boy) that prevents him from being nabbed by Stevenson goons. Richie’s threats would have made for a useful ticking-clock device, but MobLand can’t be bothered with that. Things happen almost immediately after they’re threatened without any pause for thought. There’s no wonder Harry doesn’t have time to make the couples therapy appointment with his wife, Jan.
Geoff Bell in MobLand | Image via Paramount+
Speaking of which, by the end of “Jigsaw Puzzle”, Jan wants a divorce. Harry’s personal life is evidently complicated, it seems much more than we initially realized. When Bella, Eddie’s mum, asks to meet with him, she asks him outright to spend the night with her, and it’s very strongly implied that it wouldn’t be for the first time. She’s also engaging in some kind of skullduggery with a weird Frenchman who is trying to make a deal with her. He’s not offering her much money, but she’s interested in a “different kind of currency” anyway. Yikes.
Anyway, MobLand Episode 2 also makes it clear who’s really running things for the Harrigans, and spoiler alert, it isn’t Conrad. He’s still smarting about Archie’s apparent betrayal, but I’m still much more inclined to point the finger at Maeve, especially seeing how she behaves with Eddie. He’s an insufferable, useless coke-head lout, which Conrad at least can see, but Maeve for some reason thinks he better represents the Harrigan name than any of them. She coddles him about how correct he was to stab someone who mildly inconvenienced him and gives him a bag of cocaine as a reward for his bravery. World’s best nan.
I suppose it’s easy for Maeve to behave like this since it isn’t her dealing with the consequences. That honour falls to Harry, who goes to meet Richie to try and smooth things over (again) and ends up having the life of his daughter threatened in return. This lights a fire under Harry, who speaks to Eddie and his pals and then returns to the club where they all spent the evening with Tommy Stevenson. And this time, all bets are off. He slips a knuckleduster on and brutalizes his way into a back room where he finds, finally, Tommy. Or at least what’s left of him.
As it turns out, the club owner, the son of a butcher, hacked Tommy up into pieces, wrapped the pieces in cling film, and stuffed him into a box. But who killed him? And what is Richie going to do when he finds out that his son is now in multiple non-living parts? It isn’t looking good for any of the Harrigans, if you ask me.
