TV: Green Sts.

NBC’s “The Black Donnellys” is not so much the sprawling epic of an Irish-American family’s rise to power in organized crime, as it is a game of spot the rip-off. There’s an unreliable narrator, named Joey Ice Cream, who for all intents and purposes is Ray Liotta’s Henry in Goodfellas—a nervous wiseguy with ready access to changeable flashbacks. Unfortunately, Joey’s presence in the scenes he narrates usually makes no sense whatsoever, and the writers must go out of their way to make the device serviceable.

Mystic River also figures prominently as this is a tale about kids who grew up in an Irish neighborhood to be forever changed when a mysterious dark car came down their street. The gang, now young and generally one-dimensional adults, includes the four Donnelly brothers and Jenny, a pretty girl with a heart of gold. Sean, the youngest brother, spends the first three episodes of the series unconscious because trying to develop storylines for his siblings is burdensome enough. This leaves Kevin (gambling addiction), Jimmy (drug addiction) and Tommy (just when he thinks he’s out, they pull him back in) to do the dirty work of manslaughter, corpse dismemberment and appeasement of Italian gangsters.

In his first lead role, Jonathan Tucker does a nice job of keeping Tommy a surprise, choosing the evil course of action more often than a big brother should, even if it’s all for the family. Stripped to his briefs and wielding a sledgehammer, he also displays an upper body that will keep certain demographics coming back for more.

The writers (Paul Haggis, et al) otherwise weave a myopic saga of brotherly obsession, while Haggis as director conjures an intriguing visual claustrophobia. The action transpires in a condensed NYC. Filmed in three boroughs and combined into one, the Minetta Tavern ends up situated near overhead subway tracks and NYU is spitting distance from a deserted neighborhood of single-storey homes. Close-ups of rugged faces are the favored shot, or else two bodies in close proximity with reflections trapped in a mirror or window. If the character development can rise to this level of camera work, the lads might just manage to avoid being whacked before summer.