It’s rare to tune in to a show on network television and be greeted with the sight of a man breaking the limbs of a dead man in order to stuff him in an oil drum and throw him in the East River.

No, it’s not a censored version of The Soprano’s; it’s NBC’s new mob drama, ‘The Black Donnellys.’

‘The Black Donnellys’ follows the lives of four Donnelly brothers, members of the Irish community in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and all of their run-ins with the law and the rival Italian mob.

Both the background of the characters and present-day occurrences are narrated by the unreliable Joey Ice Cream, a childhood friend of the Donnelly brothers. Joey weaves the story of the brothers to lawyers who interrogate him from jail, where Joey is being held for an unknown crime.

The four brothers each, of course, have their own stereotypical role and characteristics. Jimmy Donnelly is the older brother who owns The Firecracker Bar and has a little bit of an alcohol and heroin problem. Tommy, the protagonist of the show, is the ‘good’ brother who attends art school and tries his hardest to keep the rest of his brothers out of trouble. Kevin has a gambling problem, and Sean, the youngest Donnelly, has so far only been seen making out with girls or getting beat up by the Italians as payback.

During the pilot episode, the brothers are introduced, and then it immediately shows the kidnapping of an Italian bookie by Jimmy Donnelly and the aftermath that ensues for the next episodes.

Tommy is the most fleshed-out character on the show and also the most sympathetic. He is influenced by a childhood accident after which he vows to take care of his brothers no matter what, whether that involves yelling at them with the look of insanity in his eyes or cleaning up their (usually law-violating) messes.

This is how he gets roped into dealing with the repercussions of the kidnapping, ends up stashing the body of the bookie in an oil drum and then killing the leaders of both the Italian mob and the Irish mob in order to save Jimmy from being punished for the kidnapping, all in the span of one hour.

The violence on ‘The Black Donnellys’ is graphic, much more so than the usual intro scene of ‘Law and Order.’ But the darkness of the show gives it part of its appeal, like a tamer version of ‘The Departed,’ but instead of a creepy Jack Nicholson, there’s an Irish mob boss that can’t go anywhere without his trusty axe.

‘The Black Donnellys’ also has an element of romance, as Tommy struggles with his feelings for the girl at the diner next door, Jenny Reilly. They hook up in the second episode, but Jenny soon realizes she can’t deal with Tommy’s newfound life of crime and dodging the Italians, and ends their day-old relationship. Well, at least for now.

The downside of ‘The Black Donnellys’ is the intricacy of the plot, how storylines are rarely dropped, which forces the viewer to tune in every week, otherwise there will be at least three murders missed and countless new characters introduced.

Currently the show is on an indefinite hiatus, as NBC has not been satisfied with the ratings. The show is available for streaming on NBC.com and for downloading on iTunes, off of which NBC will most likely make its decision of when to bring the show back on air to its usual Monday 10 p.m. time slot.

‘The Black Donnellys’ is like a good old-fashioned mob drama, with a lot of unexpected plot twists and enough flinch-worthy murders to keep viewers intrigued.

Published on April 14, 2007 at 12:00 pm