MobLand returned to Paramount+ this weekend with a guns-blazing Season 2 premiere. Everything is bigger this time around. Our heroes face bigger problems. The Harrigans are taking bigger risks. And, if and when things spin out of control, there’s bound to be an even bigger mess for Harry (Tom Hardy) to clean up.

I jokingly suggested that this show ought to have been called “Harry and the Harrigans” the other day but I’ve since thought of another title: No Rest For The Wicked.

Harry is pulled in every direction all at once, all over again, like a tattered doll argued over by needy children. He’s yanked from a couples therapy session to clean up after Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) and Maeve (Helen Mirren) shoot and kill a group of Turkish gangsters at a dog race meeting gone horribly awry. Later, his wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt) texts him divorce papers.

At this point, I thought to myself “Just sign the papers, Harry! You can’t have it both ways! Surely this would be easier if you weren’t married.” Marriage is tough. It’s especially hard when one partner is a workaholic. It’s very nearly impossible when one partner is wed to his work because he literally has no choice. Harry can leave his marriage, but he can never leave the Harrigans – unless he leaves them six feet under on his way out (which may be how this show ends). What nobody seems to realize about Harry is just how deep his reserve of patience runs, though even that has its limits.

When Harry kidnaps a witness to the dog race shooting, he tells the young man that he is a professional but even he runs out of patience at times. You don’t want that to be now, he tells the frightened young man, giving him precise instructions on how to retract his statement.

Check out this weekend’s streaming guide for all the new TV shows and movies you should be watching:

Harry is Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. The boulder he pushes is the family Harrigan, and every time he gets to the top, down it rolls. Every time he fixes a problem that Conrad or Maeve created, they break it anew.

Harry tries to make peace between Conrad and his son, Kevin (Paddy Considine) but neither man has any interest in mending fences. No matter that Kat McAllister (Janet McTeer) is gunning for them, their familial feud has blinded both men to the peril they face.

Speaking of Kat, she’s not only a crime boss but also a newly appointed U.S. ambassador, which is frankly not at all what I expected. I’d heard Harry mention in the trailer that Kat’s "mob has eight trillion in cash and the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal,” which I thought he meant figuratively. He was actually referring to the United States government.

This revelation makes Kat quite a lot more dangerous, giving her diplomatic immunity on top of her criminal enterprise and vast resources. No, she can’t bring the full might of the US government to bear, but she’s a much more intimidating foe than Richie was last season (if not as charismatic). She also has the corrupt and rather diabolical Colin Tattersall (Toby Jones) offering up his services. For a fee he will find her a paladin (as he puts it) who will vanquish her enemies. I assumed Kat had all the muscle she needed, but Toby Jones is always a fun bad guy so I’m glad he’s still in the mix after his rather shocking introduction in Season 1.

Tattersall finds his paladin: Frankie Cooper (Johnny Flynn) a man we know next to nothing about, other than he likes to barbeque. Still, the episode ends on this meeting, and it’s clear that while Kat may be the Big Boss, the more immediate rival that Harry will have to face is Frankie. The Harrigans’ paladin, however, is a loyal knight, whereas Frankie is a mercenary for hire.

Other happenings in MobLand’s Season 2 premiere:

  • Maeve is meeting with Eddie , her not-grandson, on the sly. Eddie (Anson Boon) reveals that he’s been pulling small-time heists with Harry’s daughter, Gina (Teddie Allen). Gina’s racket involves getting YouTubers and streamers to pay protection money, which is hilarious, though it’s a bit of a bummer that Gina – once destined for college and a normal life – has followed in her father’s footsteps. Maeve doesn’t care for Gina at all (she seems jealous of anyone who commands Eddie’s attention) and tells Eddie in no uncertain terms that she wants him to end things with the girl.
  • Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon) meets with Kat and positions herself as the heir to the empire. We’re getting a bit of Succession in the mix at this point, with all the remaining children lining up waiting for Conrad to die. For his part, while Conrad has a few screws loose he seems perfectly healthy and hale.
  • Speaking of which, we get two awesome gunfights this episode. Well, one gunfight and one ambush. Conrad takes Paul’s pistol at the dog race and fires from both his jacket pockets on the Turkish gangsters. He, Maeve and Paul manage to take out the entire bunch, though Conrad takes a bullet.
  • The second gunfight takes place at Turkish gangster Gakbu’s house. Gakbu (Stewart Scudamor) made a deal with Conrad and then went behind his back and finalized it with Kevin instead. Harry waits outside the gate, masked, with an automatic rifle. When the gate opens, he kills the driver and bodyguard and manages to get the intel he wants out of Gakbu before he dies. Kat was behind the betrayal, just like he thought. She’s working to tear the Harrigans apart so she can devour them piece-by-piece and it’s working.

Maeve remains the wildcard. The Queen on the chessboard, always up to her own devices. Indeed, it helps to think of this show like a chessboard with all the chess pieces arrayed. Conrad is the King, Maeve the Queen, Harry a Knight, Seraphina and Kevin, Bishops, Eddie a Rook and so forth.

Kat is the other side’s King, and now she has her Knight as well, unless Frankie turns out to be a Queen (figuratively speaking). It’s probably wise to introduce a new villain beyond Kat, because every time I see her I think of Sazz (Jane Lynch) from Only Murders in the Building :

Not that intimidating, in other words, though I think that’s fine. She is the villain nobody expects, hiding in plain sight.

All told, a very fun, very explosive season 2 premiere that paves the way for another hopefully great season of TV. We already knew that Kat and Tattersall would be villains going into Season 2 so there’s not much here in the way of surprises. I was hoping we’d get a bit more of Conrad in prison, as he ended on such a high note last season, but we knew that Harry had evidence to get him and Maeve out, so that wasn’t going to happen either.

My one concern is that we’ll spend too much time navigating Harry’s ongoing marital problems. This is a pet peeve of mine. In so many crime shows, the protagonist – whether he or she is a cop or a criminal – ends up spending an inordinate amount of time arguing with a spouse or partner or tracking down their missing kid who almost invariably has a bad attitude. With a few exceptions (shows like Happy Valley are built around family, for instance) these are the least interesting beats and the most predictable. We shall see.

What did you think of the Season 2 premiere of MobLand? Let me know on Twitter , Instagram , or Facebook .