Variety Pans 'The Westies' as Dull Irish Mob Drama
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- J.K. Simmons stars as Hell's Kitchen kingpin Eamon Sweeney in "The Westies," leveraging the Javits Center construction project to profit alongside an interchangeable crew of young Irish toughs.
- Titus Welliver plays Glenn Keenan, a corrupt cop and alcoholic deadbeat dad reluctantly recruited onto an FBI task force targeting the Gambino crime family.
- The series is (loosely) based on the real-life Westies gang and features Hamish Allan-Headley as a young John Gotti, with the Irish crew trying to cooperate with the dominant Italian Mafia.
- Creators Chris Brancato and Michael Panes previously collaborated on MGM+'s "Godfather of Harlem" but, per the review, fail to match that show's specificity or the melancholy tone of "The Sopranos."
- The first two episodes premiere on MGM+ on July 12 at 9 p.m. ET, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Sundays.
- The review criticizes the show's lack of compelling protagonists, its Toronto-for-New York filming locations, and a tangential IRA subplot involving Sarah Bolger's Bridget and Allen Leech's Brendan.
Why it matters: For MGM+, the show is the network's follow-up to the established "Godfather of Harlem," but pairing a recognizable prestige actor like Simmons with a critically dismissed execution underscores the difficulty of breaking into prestige mob drama after "The Sopranos" and "Boardwalk Empire" have set the template.
