The Westies review: Peaky Blinders meets The Sopranos
The Westies, MGM+'s eight-part Irish mob drama set in 1980s Hell's Kitchen, premieres today as a violent, bingeable crime saga that critics liken to Peaky Blinders crossed with The Sopranos — strong on cast and atmosphere, uneven on plot, but worth a look for gangster-TV fans. Reviews from The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, and Digital Spy agree the real-life Westies gang makes compelling TV even when the storytelling stays merely competent.
If you have been hunting for your next fix after Peaky Blinders, this is the weekend to pay attention. Co-created by Narcos and Godfather of Harlem showrunner Chris Brancato with Michael Panes, The Westies dramatises a fractious alliance between the Irish-American Westies and the Italian-American Gambino crime family during the early 1980s construction boom around the Jacob Javits Convention Center. The show is now streaming on MGM+.
Key Takeaways
- The Westies is an eight-part MGM+ crime drama set in 1980s Hell's Kitchen, led by J.K. Simmons as gang boss Eamon Sweeney.
- Critics compare it to Peaky Blinders meets The Sopranos: violent, entertaining mob fare that rarely reaches prestige-drama greatness.
- The cast — especially Tom Brittney, Sarah Bolger, and Simmons — earns rave notices even when the plot meanders.
- Real history anchors the story: the Westies' turf war with the Gambinos over Javits Center construction money.
- Digital Spy calls it worth watching this weekend on MGM+ via Prime Video, with a finale that sets up a potential second season.
What is The Westies and where can you watch it?
The Westies is a gritty, kinetic crime drama centred on New York City's infamously violent Irish gang of the same name. The series opens as Eamon Sweeney, played by Simmons, runs operations from a portable cabin on a Hell's Kitchen building site. He has brokered a deal giving his outnumbered Irish crew a piece of a lucrative construction project — and he needs the Gambinos calm enough to keep kickbacks flowing.
That setup is what gives the show its engine. The Irish mafia and the actual mafia in one package, as Guardian critic Jack Seale puts it, was an apparent open goal for Brancato, whose resume already includes Narcos and Godfather of Harlem. Digital Spy published its review on 11 July 2026 and flagged the series as top-priority viewing; The Guardian's review landed on 12 July 2026 as the show went live on MGM+. In the UK, Digital Spy notes it is available through Prime Video.
For readers tracing how modern streaming resurrects older criminal lore, our Nostalgia: Then & Now coverage follows exactly this pattern: forgotten real-world gangs reborn as glossy period pieces.
Is The Westies really like Peaky Blinders meets The Sopranos?
That is the headline comparison, and reviewers largely agree it fits — with caveats. Seale writes that more than a decade after Tommy Shelby, TV still loves a real-life gangster crew, and the Westies were sitting there all along in a fractious 1980s alliance with the Gambino family. Brancato looked like the man to score this open goal and make Peaky Sopranos.
The result, Seale concludes, is OK. Fine. Good. The show indulges the guiltier pleasures of the mob genre — punch-ups played for laughs, a brilliantly unpleasant corpse-dismemberment scene in a butcher shop, an extended caper involving a severed hand, and over-the-top violence at a nightclub where Colombians hide a cocaine-dealing operation.
The Sopranos comparison is more about ambition than achievement. The more serious moments are where The Westies cannot distinguish itself, Seale argues. Simmons's soft, weary edge robs Sweeney of the fearsomeness a boss needs. Titus Welliver's compromised NYPD officer Glenn Keenan is, in Seale's memorable phrase, too pathetic and tired to bother with — a depressed cockatoo in silver bouffant and moustache.
Digital Spy makes a similar split verdict. Janet A. Leigh calls the series wildly intoxicating and perfect for Peaky Blinders lovers, yet admits the narrative does not live up to the power of its cast. The WSJ framed its review around craic and crime — Irish vernacular for fun mixed with violence — and Simmons starring as the Hell's Kitchen boss in an eight-part series.
Who shines in the cast of The Westies?
If there is consensus, it is this: the actors rescue material that often feels merely competent. Digital Spy is blunt: the cast is this series' strength. They are exceptional. Leigh praises Simmons's opening scene, in which Sweeney's cut-throat gesture strips away charming demeanour to expose ruthless calculation — a Whiplash-adjacent performance of fear mixed with admiration.
Tom Brittney, scarcely recognisable away from Grantchester, anchors the younger generation as Jimmy Roarke, Sweeney's brightest lieutenant pulling in a different direction from his boss. Seale and Leigh both highlight Brittney's mix of idealism, smarts, and vulnerability. His chemistry with Simmons carries a loaded, pseudo father-son dynamic tested by loyalty and obligation.
Sarah Bolger's Bridget Walsh earns dual praise. Seale calls her steely and nervy; Leigh singles out Bridget's slow-burning fight for Irish independence as the exception to frustrating plot churn. Allen Leech appears as Brendan Cahill in a storyline both critics suggest is worth the watch on its own. Stanley Morgan's traumatised Vietnam vet Mickey Flanagan adds volatility the reviews relish even when his choices strain credulity.
On the Italian side, Hamish Allan-Headley plays a young John Gotti who does not yet inspire dread, according to Seale, while Paul Castellano radiates unshakable calm in Digital Spy's account. The FBI looms over both factions as generational rebels chafe against old-school leadership — including younger mobsters eyeing cocaine riches their elders reject.
Does The Westies justify a second season?
Despite narrative stumbles, neither major review recommends skipping it. Seale acknowledges too much of The Westies is just competent, yet the season delivers set pieces memorable enough to keep you watching. Leigh is more forgiving: the series may be clumsy reaching its point, but by its culmination the payoff is worth it.
She describes the sum as a fantastic story of love, loyalty, revenge, and power laced with betrayal — one that never feels like a chore. The ending sets things up nicely for a second season, she adds, and these characters deserve one, provided future episodes iron out the kinks. That mirrors Seale's father-and-son theme: Sweeney's surrogate bond with Jimmy may prove his downfall, while Welliver's Glenn Keenan desperately tries to keep his teenage son Danny from the Westies' orbit.
Seale's bottom line is blunt but not dismissive: The Westies is fine, good, and at its best when riding the Roarke brotherhood through bloody chaos. Digital Spy goes further, calling the overall package worth the watch. For Peaky Blinders and Sopranos devotees hungry for fresh turf, MGM+ is where to start.