MobLand; All Creatures Great and Small

“After the frenetic action of the last season, you might think it’s impossible to match the sheer bloodstained pace, but they pull it off; the performances are key, adding bite and subtlety to the more conventional gangster moments and another complex series arc taken from the playbook of pretty much every drama in the genre. Hardy is utterly mesmerising as the gruff killer, threatening and cajoling and killing and handling a silence like no one on any screen, big or small. He’s certainly the man you want on your side when, as he sees it, the family are facing a “death spiral”.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“MobLand borrows the family angle from The Sopranos, asking, through Harry’s relationship with his wife and daughter, what it might actually be like to live a life of illegally acquired abundance. In neither case, however – London’s underlying power structures nor the familial aspect of a crime family – is the show that interested, because it can’t let go of an adolescent excitement of cool men with two-day beards shooting each other. This means that the sensational cast – Paddy Considine sharing a screen with Tom Hardy; [Johnny] Flynn, [Janet] McTeer, [Toby] Jones and Ophelia Lovibond as the cop on their tail – is there first and foremost to serve the plot, rather than the plot serving their characters.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“MobLand. It sounds like a regional nightclub. Or a boyband. But it’s not. It’s a Paramount+ crime drama starring Pierce Brosnan as an Irishman unable to speak in a convincing Irish accent. This is his tragedy. His cross to bear. And now it’s ours, too, because MobLand is back for a second series, with Brosnan – as the veteran gang boss Conrad Harrigan – once again battling other gang bosses while attempting to say things like “Oi love ye loike a tramp loves paraffin” without his vowels shrivelling into tiny raisins of pseudo-Hibernian shame. Does he succeed? Oi tink not! But there are bigger problems afoot, to be sure.”
Sarah Dempster, The Guardian

“War is over in All Creatures Great and Small (5) and normality is restored, although has this series ever been anything less than a knitted comfort blanket for the soul? It has no shame in that. It doesn’t fret about being “fashionable” and that is precisely its superpower. As such, five minutes into the seventh series we had a wide shot of the Dales, with a local bus pootling along a lone road. We’ve come to expect nothing less. James and Helen alighted in Darrowby and, linking arms, broke into smiles wider than a Yorkshire meadow, their contentment to be home almost reflecting that of the viewers. James and Helen are the most wholesome and upstanding couple on television. There’s no one you’d trust more to look after your toddlers.”
James Jackson, The Times

“The episode began with James in London, lecturing at the Royal Veterinary College (actually filmed at Bradford’s City Hall, trivia fans). It all looked perfectly nice, but what a relief when the next scene cut back to the wide open spaces of the Yorkshire Dales. That’s where we’re happiest. “People come here for a little bit of happiness and that’s not a luxury, it’s an essential,” says Mr Hatfield. He’s talking about his shop, but I’m sure the scriptwriters were thinking of this show and its audience when they crafted that line.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph