After The Sopranos and The Shield, the best criminal drama on television

With The Sopranos and The Shield, two of television’s most enthralling television shows, coming to an end soon, viewers will be looking for that next great criminal drama to pique their interest. The Black Donnellys is that television show. While it’s still in its infant stage, The Black Donnellys combines the writing talents of Paul Haggis along with a young and stellar cast.

The Black Donnellys revolves around a group of four brothers: Jimmy, the oldest and perhaps least wise of the group, Tommy, the most sensible one who tends to get the brothers out of any mess they get in, Kevin, a nice guy with a gambling problem, and Sean, the “pretty boy” in the group. Together, they help each other out, never putting business ahead of family.

However, after Jimmy loses truckful of stolen shirts, he and Kevin decide to take an Italian loan shark hostage. Even though the Italians and the Irish already had bad blood between them, Jimmy sees it as a necessary thing to do in order to keep their business alive. But the ransom demand turns out to have disastrous results.

To tell any more about the show’s plot would be to ruin its greatest element, which is the element of surprise. Paul Haggis (director AND writer of Best Picture winner Crash) combines the best components from all of his movies (a slow moving, character driven plot and family themes) into a brand new criminal drama that lacks The Sopranos’ violence, yet makes up for it in character development.

The creators of the show certainly have a lot to learn. At times, the plot moves so slowly that you’ll wish somebody gets whacked, just for the sake of creating some momentum. But if you stick with the show, you’ll find that Haggis will throw in a surprise every now and then that will make you grin.

The cast, while consisting of mainly new, unknown actors, manages to come off as somewhat talented. It’ll be nice to see how they evolve throughout the series.

Now that two of everybody’s favorite shows are leaving the air for good, hopefully the Black Donnellys can remain a contender for “best criminal drama.”



GRADE: B-