TV Review: 'The Black Donnellys'

The Black Donnellys, NBC's new drama on Monday nights after Heroes.

If you watched an NBC show in the last week then you no-doubt saw an ad or two for The Black Donnellys. The NBC hype touted it as "the most anticipated show this year," or some such non-sense. Well, did the pilot live up to the high expectations that NBC tried to generate?

In a word, 'No.' About twenty minutes into the show I was thinking 'Why should I care about these @!$%#s?' Those '@!$%#s' are the Donnelly brothers. You know, the 'stars' of the show. The brothers, there are four of them, have been thieves since childhood and now in young adulthood they are expanding into grand theft, kidnapping and eventually murder (this in the first thirty minutes of the show). Oh, and one of them is a heroin addict.

I just don't care for any of the characters, not even the young gal-pal the producers included to try and balance out all of the testosterone. Sean is the young, sensitive brother (I know because I saw him drawing). Jimmy, the heroin addict, feels responsible that the Italians beat their father to death. Kevin's character flaw seems to be that he supports his brothers in whatever anti-social behavior they choose to indulge in. Tommy is the smart one; he has kept his nose mostly clean (more or less) and enables his brothers by getting them out of jams. Jenny, the gal-pal, is married but she doesn't know her husband has been killed.

That's a lot of story packed into just the first half of the hour-long drama, how did they do that? The producers used a flashback (oooohh, fancy artsy technique used on television). Joey Ice Cream is in prison wearing an orange jumpsuit as he tells us this story to police interrogators. What is Joey's relationship with the brothers? As a child he seems to be their friend but as an adult he seems to be a bit antagonistic towards them.

It looks like Joey Ice Cream turned snitch and ratted out his childhood friends, the Donnelly brothers. At least that's what I expect the gist of the series to be, but I won't find out since I will not watch one more minute of this lousy show. Thanks NBC for freeing up an extra hour on Monday nights for me.

A Few More Thoughts About The Black Donnellys

• The contrast with Heroes is striking and a bit ironic. I like Heroes because of the characters and I can relate to them better although most of them are mutants. The drama in Heroes comes form these well-crafted characters, the drama in The Black Donnellys comes from characters that are confrontational @!$%#s.
• I lost Studio 60 for The Black Donnellys? I wasn't a big fan of Studio 60 but I thought it was a decent show and watched it most of the time.
• The Sopranos managed to make bad guys at least a little sympathetic and likable, The Black Donnellys doesn't even come close.

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Note

If you want to evaluate The Black Donnellys for yourself, then you can waste an hour of your life catch a special encore broadcast Thursday night (March 1) on NBC at 10:00pm, Wednesday night (March 7) at midnight on USA Network, and Sunday afternoon (March 11) at 3:00pm on Bravo.

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