Divided loyalties

Dark and compelling, series is an Irish stew of crime and politics

By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff  |  July 7, 2006

If Showtime's gripping new drama ``Brotherhood" were a patient on the couch, it might be sent home with a prescription for anti depressants.

The 11-episode series is a brooding affair, its numbed-out characters adrift in the bleak streets of Providence, where it was filmed. Everyone in and around the show's Irish-American Caffee family is selling his or her soul for a bit of power, even mother Rose (Fionnula Flanagan), who puts the arch in matriarch. Her Cain and Abel sons, Tommy and Michael, are especially glum, as they backstab their foes -- one figuratively, the other literally.

Not that there's anything wrong with a series that's got the blues. Some of TV's best dramas -- ``Homicide," ``The Wire," ``The Shield" -- have been humorless, raw, gray, and urban. ``Brotherhood," which premieres Sunday night at 10, may not be one of the all-time great crime shows, but it's certainly a very good one that improves with each episode.

Unofficially modeled after Boston's Bulger brothers (see sidebar), this almost mythic story about a politician and his gangster brother is an unexpected summer gift. It inches Showtime closer to its goal, which is to rate with HBO and FX in quality dramas.

``Brotherhood" follows the ambitious Caffee brothers, as well as the two very different, but equally captivating, actors who play them. Tommy is the better brother, if not exactly a good guy. He loyally supports his neighborhood, the Hill, as a Rhode Island state representative, trying to protect his blue-collar constituents from big-business interests. He wants to stay aloof from old-boy politics, but his family needs force him to compromise his integrity.

Australian actor Jason Clarke makes Tommy hard not to watch, with his boyish face built around a long, straight nose and eyes that are by turns fearful, insolent, and honorable. Clarke quietly carries those episodes when the political twists aren't as original as they might be.

Michael is the gangster brother, who was presumed dead but has just returned from seven years in exile. He wants to reclaim the Hill territory that he's lost, but crime boss Freddie Cork (Kevin Chapman) has other ideas. Using brutal violence and one despicable manipulation involving threats to a mentally disabled man, Michael pushes forward, setting up shop at a liquor store with a former partner. From there and a bar, he exploits the disorganization of Providence organized crime to his advantage. Looking like a mid-career Robert De Niro, Jason Isaacs plays Michael as a charming Neanderthal, a man who seduces a woman by giving her the ear of one of his enemies. He has a twinkle in his eye, and a gun in his hand.

Michael is not invulnerable. In his corrupt world, there are rats, there are feds, and there are local cops, including a one time pal of the Caffees, Declan Giggs (Ethan Embry). And no matter how hard Tommy tries to stay autonomous in the State House, his connection to Michael forces him to take backroom favors. The brothers are so different, and yet so much alike. Blake Masters, the show's creator, won't let us forget that a life in crime and a life in politics inevitably have plenty in common.

Kudos to both Jasons for their accents, particularly since Clarke is from Australia and Isaacs is from England. They have a local blue-collar sound down, and if they're not precisely Providence, they're close enough. Alas, the show's two leading women don't quite relax into their accents, which some viewers might find distracting.

As Rose, Flanagan begins the series by squashing her Irish accent to sound like a generically trashy American; a few episodes later, however, she wisely gives in to her brogue. When her voice isn't constrained, Flanagan makes Rose's cold heart and her over-attachment to Michael convincingly menacing. She only pretends not to know he's a sociopath.

Annabeth Gish, who plays Tommy's sad wife, also seems to strain to get her mouth working properly. She may even be a little miscast -- too wholesome-looking to play one of the show's darkest creations. Eileen Caffee looks like a politician's loyal wife and a balanced mother, but scratch the surface and she's a desperately powerless woman. Her despair leads her to a secret life of sexual affairs and drugs, and in a close-knit neighborhood like the Hill, that's playing with fire. Like most of the characters, she is sitting on a tinderbox of secrets. Gish approximates a woman in Eileen's position, but I kept thinking that an actress with more brass might have knocked this role out of the park.

Despite the many dark personal dramas, ``Brotherhood" is anything but a nighttime soap opera. When you step back from its many grim particulars, the series takes on the shape of an epic tragedy about American culture. As globalization, gentrification, and downsizing plow ever forward and leave Starbucks in their wake, neighborhoods like the Hill are losing their identities and their livelihoods. The deteriorating row houses and vacant industrial buildings on the Hill are symbols of doom, and its working-class citizens are as depressed as their economy. Michael and Tommy struggle for local empowerment in their own ways, but both are clearly engaged in uphill battles.

And so what if ``Brotherhood" isn't rich in black comedy and manicotti? Not every cable series can be ``The Sopranos," the crime series that ``Brotherhood" is doomed to be compared to. For this Irish-American clan, life is a lot more somber. Meat and potatoes will do.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.