Mob rule is alive and well on the small screen with the arrival of the epic gangster drama, 'Boardwalk Empire'. The RTÉ Guide’s Donal O’Donoghue takes its measure.
Roll up! Roll up! Ladies and gentleman, I give you 'Boardwalk Empire': the most whooped-up, far out and over-hyped TV show of recent times. Marvel at this extravaganza that shows humanity at its most base and most heroic! See the man who ruled a city with guile and geld! Wonder at the violence of the gangster with the livid scar! Be amazed at the booze that oiled the Jazz Age!
Just don’t dream of complaining about the violence, the sex or the swearing because this is HBO and telling the story of gambling paradise Atlantic City in the Roaring Twenties can’t be done without busting a few bones or breaking a few taboos. That, and some $30 million in loose change.
Created by Terence Winter (a chief writer on 'The Sopranos') and with Martin Scorsese as an executive producer (and director of the pilot episode), Boardwalk Empire crosses the Atlantic this week garlanded with critical praise and a Golden Globe for its unlikely leading man, Steve Buscemi. Such has been the bellow of advance publicity that many are already on first-name terms with the 12-part series that premiered Stateside last September. Based on Nelson Johnson’s 'Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City', the HBO show interweaves fact and fiction as real-life criminals (Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano, Big Jim Colosimo and, most memorably, Al Capone) cross swords with fictional characters. But centre stage is the man who oils the wheels and rules the boardwalk, Atlantic City’s one-time treasurer, Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson (Buscemi).
Thompson stands tall in the show’s classic opening sequence, a dream-like riff as cryptic as a René Magritte canvas and as pure as a bullet. Like an undertaker anticipating his own funeral, the man is ankle-deep in the Atlantic with the tide coming in. And what a tide! It’s a sea of bootleg liquor washing onto the shore and around Thompson’s spats-clad feet. Is it a portent of life or death? Who knows. Like any opening sequence worth a damn, the more mystery it wraps itself up in, the better to bewitch the viewer, and at times 'Boardwalk Empire' can be utterly beguiling. This is particularly true in Scorsese’s $20 million pilot (the most expensive ever) with its dizzying tracking shots and high-rolling set-pieces – you can almost taste the bubbly as the Age of Prohibition is uncorked with a speakeasy number that Busby Berkeley would envy.
In those early episodes, Thompson is close to caricature and in danger of being swamped by this all-singing, all-dancing recreation of Atlantic City in its Prohibition heyday. “Is he a bit too thin for the part?” asked Neil Jordan recently when we briefly discussed the show (Jordan had not yet seen the series). Momentarily, I thought the film-maker was referring to the actor’s cadaverous frame but Jordan was actually wondering aloud about Buscemi’s star wattage and his ability to carry the weight of such a titanic production.
When we first meet this dandy of decadence, he is addressing a wide-eyed gathering of the Women’s Temperance League, spinning a yarn so woolly that you could use it to dress a king-size bed. Indeed, it takes Buscemi’s dead-eyed huckster a few episodes to square up to the production values and for the dime to drop. Here is a crooked man in every sense of the word.
Nucky’s driver and right-hand man is Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), who abandoned a promising college career in Princeton for the Western Front and now, scarred by his experience, is open to the promise of new experiences and easy money. Kelly Macdonald is the love interest, Margaret Schroeder. She is from ‘the old country’ which presumably means Ireland but with that mangled accent there must have been a couple of detours before she landed at Ellis Island. Chaste as the driven snow, Margaret is married to a lout and layabout and she soon catches the eye of Nucky, a man who likes his nookie but pines for the romantic ideal of his late wife. Maybe you can see where that is headed.
In a way, 'Boardwalk Empire' is the godfather of HBO’s other great gangster series, 'The Sopranos'. It also nods towards the wicked west of 'Deadwood' with its portrayal of a town riding the whirlwind of excess. Scorsese must have enjoyed helming the opening episode: the missing link in his New York gangster story somewhere between the atavism of 'Gangs of New York' and the business of 'Goodfellas'. Here is the original 'Casino', with Nucky Thompson as the fairground barker. So roll up for 'Boardwalk Empire': it may not be the greatest show on earth, but for now, it’s the biggest show in town.
Donal O’Donoghue
