Friday, September 01, 2006

It's Showtime: TV series-Brotherhood

Take one part Sopranos and add one part West Wing, a dash of Cain and Abel and that pretty well gives you an indication as to what Brotherhood is all about. The tale of a family of Irish Americans plays out weekly on Movie Central, an intimate look at the lives of two brothers of an important Irish American family in Rhode Island.

One brother is a gangster, the other a politician, the Mother is a domineering force in both their lives who holds court almost on a daily basis. Within their own struggles are characters who weave in and out of their daily lives, with their own skeletons and their own problems.

The program seems to be a slightly veiled characterization of the famous Bulger family of Boston, who became famous due to the seemingly opposite poles that they exist under. One Bulger is one of the most feared gangsters ever to come out of South Boston, the other one of the most beloved of pols to ever come from that bare knuckle part of the city. Brotherhood seems to play out their lives in cinematic form, transplanted to Rhode Island.

It’s been on Movie Central for the summer having come across the border like many others from the Showtime service in the USA. Yet another fine entertainment option that makes you want to subscribe to your Movies package of your satelite provider or cable outlet.

Brothernood is a great bar brawl of a show, with much in common with the Sopranos. It features much in the way of the same violence and duplicity present with Tony and the gang and combines that underlying theme of family always coming first. As the episodes have played out since the series debut in July one thing seems clear, in Rhode Island, you should keep your friends close, but your enemies closer!

Movie Central has a truncated version of the website here, the Showtime site for whatever reason is blocked to Canadians, so we can’t take advantage of the special features that they offer to those viewers below the 49th and to the left of the 54-40 line.

The show airs numerous times during the week, so you have ample opportunity to catch each weeks episode somewhere along the line.

Here are a few thoughts from the eyes of the critics..

Metacritic reviews
TV.com page
San Francisco Chronicle-Tim Goodman
The Hollywood Reporter-Barry Garron
Detroit Free Press-Mike Duffy
Salon-Heather Havrilesky

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