Tom Hardy & the Audi RS6 he drives is good … but that’s about it for Mobland Season 1

Tom Hardy in Mobland, and the Audi RS6 he drives in the show

Spoiler Alert — the following contains spoilers for Season 1 of Mobland. Stop reading if you haven't finished watching.

I just finished Season 1 of Mobland, starring Tom Hardy as the lead with major supporting roles from Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren. I started watching it on a plane — the first episode was strong enough that I decided to continue at home. Tom Hardy's performance, combined with the gangster drama premise and that supporting cast, kept me engaged through the first three to five episodes.

What follows is a genuine rant about what happens when a show with a promising premise and an excellent cast is let down by writing that seems to make story decisions on a whim.

The Plot Loses Its Way Fast

Somewhere around episodes three to five, I noticed the storyline had started twisting and turning in ways that didn't quite add up. By that point I was invested enough — and with only ten episodes in the season — that I decided to push through to the end.

I regret nothing but I won't pretend it was satisfying.

The core problem is that characters come and go — mostly die — without their exits meaningfully changing anything. Two police characters are present for roughly the first half of the season and then killed off somewhere in the back half. I genuinely can't remember exactly when it happened, which tells you everything about how much narrative weight their deaths carried.

One of the sons of the Harrigan crime family is killed. Again — minimal impact on the trajectory of the story. It comes and goes like a minor inconvenience.

And then there's Kat McAllister. She's introduced as an almost omnipotent figure — someone with seemingly unlimited power and influence, positioned as a significant threat. Then in the finale, Tom Hardy's character essentially tells her to get lost. Just like that. For a character who's supposed to be smart, cunning and calculating, that decision makes absolutely no sense. You don't dismiss someone with that kind of reach unless you have a very good reason — and the show never gives us one.

The writing doesn't earn its own twists. Characters exist to be removed rather than to drive the story forward. And by the end, it's hard to feel that anything that happened carried real stakes.

The Audi RS6 Though — That's a Different Story

Audi RS6 Avant

Here's where the show redeemed itself for me, at least partially.

Tom Hardy's character drives an Audi RS6 throughout the series, and it gets significant screen time. I vaguely remembered seeing one parked on a neighbour's driveway years ago and thinking it looked unusual. Watching it in Mobland reminded me why.

The RS6 is a genuinely rare type of performance car — a station wagon, which is a body style that's popular in Europe but almost invisible in the North American market. And yet it has this commanding presence on screen. Low stance. Long bonnet. Aggressively flared wheel arches housing large wheels. It looks purposeful in a way that most SUVs — which is what North American buyers choose instead — simply don't.

After the show I looked it up. The current RS6 is powered by a twin-turbocharged 4.0L V8 producing 621 horsepower. I did not expect that number. A 621 horsepower station wagon is a genuinely absurd thing to exist — and I mean that as a compliment.

MSRP starts at approximately $155,000 CAD, which given everything else about the car is not surprising.

My only real complaint? It doesn't come in manual transmission. Of course 😂

Final Thought

I wrote recently about how we're living in the golden age of TV — and I stand by that. But finishing Mobland reminded me of the other side of that equation. There is so much content available right now that it's genuinely hard to filter the good from the disappointing. Online reviews help, but taste is subjective and what works for one viewer doesn't always translate to another.

Mobland had everything it needed to be great. The cast was there. The premise was there. The car was definitely there.

The writing just didn't show up.

So what do you think — is there too much TV right now? Or is there simply no such thing as too much choice?