Showtime Series: Brotherhood

Showtime opened its 2006 season with a brand new series, hoping to ease the loss of the highly acclaimed Soprano's. Brotherhood was an almost instant success. Starring Jason Patrick as Tommy Caffee, an Irish politician and his brother Michael Caffee, a hoodlum with a heart. The entire production is shot live on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island, lending a brooding dark glimpse of its mean streets. There are no glitzy stage settings or gorgeous homes here. Instead viewers are taken into the lives of ordinary working class families who cope daily with garbage, malfunctioning appliances and the struggle to keep one step ahead of total poverty.

The characters are all fully fleshed out, complex human beings. Tommy is the princeling of his family. He is a career politician who works hard on behalf of the people who elected him to represent them. On the surface he exudes an aura of honesty and integrity. But underneath is something darker and much crueler. Michael, who had been long missing from the family, returns in the opening first season segment. A known criminal he is bitterly resented by his brother, hated by the cops and feared by his rivals. He is as dark as his older brother is light. In a savagely ironic twist of character, Michael has a deep core of compassion and goodness. Here the directors show consummate skill in avoiding the formulaic and trite when teasing these contrasts into life on the screen.

The interplay between Tommy and Michael is fraught with a painful mixture of love and deep anger, so palpable it makes you wince, as you recall your own sibling angsts. The other characters in the series are just as complex as Tommy and Michael. Tommy's wife Eileen, played by Annabeth Gish, is an ideal Irish politicians wife and a loving mother. Intelligent and compassionate, she quietly sits by Tommy's side. But, left to her own devices, Eileen is a hard drinking, drug taking, highly sexed woman who takes lovers whenever she can. In the first season, we watched her self destructive behavior with something approaching awe. As the second season opened, Tommy has discovered all her secrets and is barely able to look at her. His hypocrisy is fascinating to watch, as we witness his dirty back room deals with a variety of corrupt civil servants.

Ethan Embry who plays Declan, an Irish cop, is one of the most surprising characters in the entire cast. With his soft eyes and quiet love for his wife Cassie, Declan seems to embody everything good in the Irish male. But it is Declan, in a fit of black rage who nearly stomps Michael to death in last seasons finale. And it is Declan who is a loose cannon in this seasons episodes, living on the edge and making deals with the devil to stay alive. That dark rage is evident as he tries to cope with the loss of Cassie, who's left him because she could not face the lies he's told.

This is a far deeper more realistic look at the mob in Rhode Island than we've seen in a very long time. The producers and directors spare nothing in their quest to give viewers an in your face, tightly drawn story line, that only gets better as the season moves on. Blake Masters is at the top of his form with brotherhood giving us a series we can really sink our minds into.

Take a look at a clip from this seasons episodes: http://www.sho.com/site/video/player.do?video=/291/2007/291_203_b