Last night, NBC premiered its newest series, The Black Donnellys. The drama, scripted by Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco (both of Crash fame, among other places), centers around the four brothers in the Donnelly family: Tommy, Jimmy, Kevin, and Sean. As with most sets of brothers (or siblings in general) the Donnelly boys don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything.
Raised in a strictly working class neighborhood, the boys grew up committing small crimes (stealing ice cream bins and the like) and eventually graduated to higher orders of legal problems. Tommy (Jonathan Tucker) is at the center of the show, and is the Donnelly boy that’s trying to go straight. Some of Tommy’s brothers however, most notably Jimmy (Tom Guiry), are not interested in such a life. Jimmy has drug problems and has no compunction about committing various crimes (including stealing a truck full of Hawaiian shirts). Kevin (Billy Lush) is the gambler of the family. Kevin will tag along with Jimmy on the crimes, but feels associated with Tommy as well. Then there’s Sean (Michael Stahl-David); he’s the baby of the family and the one with the good looks.
As the pilot opens, it seems as though Kevin owes thousands of dollars to a bookie. Over the course of the episode, Jimmy and Kevin concoct and execute a plan to kidnap the bookie and hold him for ransom. This bad idea turns out to be an even worse one when it is found out that the bookie’s related to an Italian mob boss. The boss goes after the Donnelly boys, and Sean ends up in the hospital. Jimmy, hothead that he is, shoots the bookie. The local Irish mob sells out Jimmy to the Italian mob, but Tommy is smart enough to recognize the double-cross. By the end of the first episode the Donnellys have taken out the heads of the Irish and Italian mobs in the neighborhood and have become, by default, the new bosses. For better or worse, it looks like Tommy is going to have a hard time staying on the straight and narrow at this point.
Article comments
1 - Lisa McKay
Congratulations! This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States.
2 - methuselah
Hackneyed and cliche-ridden. Maybe that's bound to be true of any drama about crooks, killers, betrayers and dope-fiends. Maybe this whole line of entertainment oughta be droppped, glamorizing and legitimizing the most aberrant and harmful of societies members.
3 - Dave Roddick
I resent the fact that this story -- even its title -- is a blatant ripoff of a book about a family in the small town of Lucan, Ontario, Canada. They were a bunch of small-time punks who were murdered one night by the "good" people of the town, who burned their house to the ground.
The story is familiar to Canadians. But now every time I do a search on the "Black Donnellys" I have to wade through a bunch of references to that stupid show. The sooner it goes off the air the better!