Warning: This post contains spoilers for MobLand Season 1, Episode 10 MobLand season 1 comes to an end with episode 10, "The Beast in Me". The title is a reference to a Johnny Cash song which plays at the beginning and the end of the episode, and I suppose serves as a thematic wrap-up of Ronan Bennett's crime drama. Like a lot of Johnny Cash songs, the lyrics are straightforward and brief. There's a beast inside of him that is always threatening to escape. This song was released in 1994, at a time when Cash was reckoning with his lifetime of drug use.

The "beast" is alcoholism, or drug addiction, or gambling, or any other vice that you try to shield from public view. It's a sad and painful song about celebrity, your public persona, and dependence. For MobLand, all that matters is that the term "beast" is synonymous with monster. Everyone in MobLand is a beast, we are told. Deeper ideas, subtext, introspection, none of that matters in MobLand. Beast equals monster, so hit play, and to really drive home the message, hit it twice.

MobLand Never Managed To Figure Out What Story It Wanted To Tell

Everyone In MobLand Is Interchangeable

Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell) is dead. So are a lot of other characters. I can't their names, and their fates don't make much of an impact on anything, because nothing matters in MobLand. Storylines get wrapped up in neat little monologues by Kevin (Paddy Considine), or Bella (Lara Pulve), or Kat (Janet McTeer). Dozens of named and unnamed characters are killed, only to be replaced by someone not much different. When a certain undercover cop is extrajudicially murdered, bring in a lawyer character to take her place.

The storylines we have imperfectly tracked all season have gone nowhere. It seems we are right back where we started, and all is forgiven among the Harrigan family, who are now positioned as a scrappy group of upstarts who will always stick together. Or maybe they're conniving vipers, each preparing to shank one another. Or maybe they are the nutty kings of the underworld, with Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) being cheered on by a prison full of nasty fellows like a football player who made the game-winning catch as the height of their ambitions.

All these options remain open not because they offer an intriguing look into the future, which MobLand is likely pining for, but because the show is not sure who the Harrigans are. They aren't pieces on a chessboard, they're pieces on a checkerboard. Easy to remove, shift, and replace with little to distinguish one from the other, save for the occasional ding or scratch.

Characters' Actions Have No Effect On The Story

Harry Da Souza Is Right Back Where He Was In The Premiere

Nothing matters in MobLand, and in the season finale, that's probably more true than ever. When characters talk to each other, they say a lot, but none of it means anything. When you see two characters beginning a scene, feel free to check your phone for 30 seconds, because characters initiate every conversation with a barrage of repetitive metaphors and stories that go nowhere before they arrive at their point. It's not color, it's padding.

Despite all the storylines that needed to be tied up, "The Beast in Me" drags on more than any episode yet.

Despite all the storylines that needed to be tied up, "The Beast in Me" drags on more than any episode yet. Revelations are sped through, while new conflicts between Kevin and Conrad, or Eddie (Anson Boone) and Bella, suddenly eat up screen time.

I can't really be sure how the season ended. Conrad's set to get out of prison, and yet the episode ends with him in the bowels of the jail, arms aloft in triumph, as if this is his true home. Kevin and Harry (Tom Hardy) take over the fentanyl business with their double dealings revealed, yet they seem to be preparing to welcome Maeve (Helen Mirren) and Conrad back. Eddie is so angry about his parentage that he tries to kill his mother, but a couple of cheap shots to the gut from Zosia (Jasmine Jobson) is enough to cool him off.

MobLand season 2 has not been renewed yet.

The finale of MobLand is plagued with the same problem that it has had since the beginning. The show does not know what it wants to be. After ten episodes spent trying on different plots, like Eddie trying on his revolving wardrobe of big, furry coats, it's too late. The party's over, the season is done, and we're not much further from where we started.