Hard-drinking Irish brothers play tough and dirty|At the start of Monday’s eagerly anticipated NBC drama “The Black Donnellys,” a stunning medley of gunfire and bagpipes places us immediately in the home turf of the Black Irish.
We’ve seen these fair- skinned, dark-haired descendants of Ireland often in American film, especially films about mobsters. From “Angels With Dirty Faces” to “The Departed,” the handsome, melancholy, hale and tough characters are familiar.
Playing with and against stereotypes, a new series with impeccable creative credentials launches a serious yarn about the hard-drinking, hard-brawling Irish-Americans.
The Donnelly brothers, a working-class family with strong bonds, hail from New York’s Hell’s Kitchen.
Our introduction comes from a cocky storyteller and, equally important it seems, via a cinematic storytelling style eager to make a big impression.
“The Black Donnellys,” at 9 p.m. Monday on KUSA-Channel 9, is the brainchild of Academy Award winners Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco (“Crash”), fashioned loosely around Moresco’s early life. The pilot was directed by Haggis, who also wrote the Academy Award-winning “Million Dollar Baby.”
With “Donnellys,” Haggis the director is showing off. Altering time sequences, fast-forwarding jump cuts – the tricks are ingenious. But are they enough to keep viewers hooked?
“Joey Ice Cream,” who claims he is so nicknamed “’cause under pressure I’m like ice,” is the proud narrator with the lively imagination.
“I always wanted brothers like that,” Joey tells police interrogators. At times his monologues are contradicted in pictures. He’s clearly just a wannabe, but he spins a good tale.
“People have accused the Black Irish of every crime that came along,” Joey observes. In his revisionist history, these are criminals with hearts of gold.
The four Donnelly brothers are proprietors of the dilapidated Firecracker Lounge. Kevin is a gambler, in debt. Jimmy, the one with a bad leg, is a junkie. He’s the one who told the rival Italian mob where their father was the night he was beaten to death. Tommy, an artist, is the central, most likable brother. As a kid, he prayed that Jimmy would walk again; he got his wish but didn’t negotiate the terms in advance. Now he feels he’s being punished by God, having to do the family’s dirty work – reprisals and more.
Sean, the baby of the family, is the pretty boy. Girls love him.
Their neighbor, the lovely Jenny, married a teacher, now missing. Nobody’s told Jenny that he’s deceased. She loves Tommy but considers herself a married woman.
“People think we’re drunks and brawlers,” Joey notes. “This kind of negative stereotype makes you so mad sometimes all you want to do is get drunk and punch somebody.”
Notable in the continuing cast are Kirk Acevedo, Thomas Guiry, Billy Lush, Keith Nobbs, Michael Stahl-David, Jonathan Tucker and Olivia Wilde.
But too often, it’s all about the director. The series feels cinematic and overpacked with narrative. Only prolonged viewing allows the audience to make sense of the story.
Although the brothers’ characters take clearer shape with each succeeding hour (I got through three), the story is unrelentingly dark.
Oh, those Black Irish: Crazy for the women, crazy for the booze. Ceasing their fistfights and gunfire only long enough to get through a funeral Mass, promising retribution on the way to the wake. But is there anything here we haven’t seen before?
As the violent, blood-soaked hours unfold, Kevin is increasingly skittish, Jenny is depressed, Tommy is at odds with himself.
“Trust me,” he tells Jenny.
But why should she? And can we? Should we believe his angst any more than we believe the fabrications supplied by Joey Ice Cream?
“To be Irish is to know that, in the end, the world will break your heart,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said.
The corollary might be: To be an Irish thug on television is to know that, in the end, the stereotypes will beam through.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
