The first episode of Paramount+’s hit series MobLand made for the streaming service’s second-biggest premiere before the initial 10-episode season of the crime drama earned a respectable 76 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and praise for the performances from its ensemble cast, led by Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren, and Pierce Brosnan. And according to Emmett J. Scanlan, who plays the trusted right-hand man to Brosnan’s crime family patriarch, the much anticipated second season will be even better.
“If you liked season one, penned incredibly by Jez Butterworth, then season two is season one on steroids!” Scanlan told Hello! while promoting his new Netflix show How to Get to Heaven From Belfast. “It is insane, it’s bananas. I loved season one, I loved reading it and getting lost in that world. I think season two is even better. The scripts are fantastic.”
Scanlan added that it’s a true honor to work alongside Brosnan, whom he holds in high regard. “I get to go toe-to-toe with Pierce Brosnan for a number of scenes and he is an absolute delight. They say never meet your heroes but I mean that’s [expletive] because this guy is so warm, so welcoming, and so nurturing and such an artist. To work with heroes and to get to be on set with people who are better than me inevitably, it makes every day a school day. I just get to learn from them. It’s amazing!”
MobLand follows the Harrigans, a powerful Irish crime family headed by Brosnan’s particularly brutal patriarch Conrad and his ruthlessly opportunistic wife, Mirren’s. The family’s control of the city’s gun and drug trade is under constant threat from a rival gang, but they’ve got a fiercely loyal “fixer” in Tom Hardy’s Harry Da Souza. While Da Souza works to keep everyone in line under the Harrrigans, often only needing to threaten violence rather than resort to brute force, his personal life is crumbling.
Season 1 was created and written by Butterworth and Ronan Bennett, who also both serve as executive producers alongside Hardy and superstar action flick auteur Guy Ritchie, who previously revealed that he and showrunners opted to bring a “more traditional, grounded perspective” to MobLand.
“It’s about the psychology behind the behavior, the family kingdom in the Cotswolds”—a rural area of south central England containing Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire—”and the rot that sets in when trees grow too tall. It felt fresh to me because it wasn’t about the ‘heist,’ but about the fallout.” A premiere date for MobLand season 2 hasn’t been set, but expect it to arrive in 2026.
