The Westies brings the combustible mix of Irish-American gangsters and the Gambino crime family to 1980s New York. Its strongest scenes embrace the grim, darkly comic excess of mob drama, but its more serious character work often feels too familiar.
Created by Chris Brancato and Michael Panes, the series follows a smaller Irish crew trying to hold on to a profitable construction arrangement in Hell’s Kitchen. The deal places the Westies under pressure to keep their far more powerful Italian allies satisfied while their own members repeatedly make reckless decisions.
A fragile alliance at the center
JK Simmons plays Eamon Sweeney, the Westies leader who operates from a portable cabin on a building site. He has secured his crew a share of a million-dollar construction project, but that success depends on maintaining peace with the Gambinos.
That balance is threatened from both sides. The younger Irish gangsters are portrayed as volatile heavy drinkers, while their Italian counterparts are no less impulsive when violence becomes an option.
| Character | Actor | Role in the conflict |
|---|---|---|
| Eamon Sweeney | JK Simmons | Westies leader protecting the construction deal |
| Jimmy Roarke | Tom Brittney | Sweeney’s capable lieutenant with competing loyalties |
| John Gotti | Hamish Allan-Headley | An ambitious young Gambino figure unwilling to accommodate the Irish |
| Glenn Keenan | Titus Welliver | An NYPD officer battling gambling, drinking, and family pressures |
Jimmy Roarke and Mickey Flanagan drive the chaos
Jimmy Roarke is Sweeney’s brightest lieutenant, but his strongest loyalty is to his friend Mickey Flanagan, an unstable Vietnam veteran. Mickey enters the story while receiving electroconvulsive therapy and soon causes further trouble by failing to respect the limits of the arrangement with the Italians.
The series finds more energy when Jimmy, Mickey, and the Roarke circle are carrying out bad plans while half-drunk. A chain of poor choices leads to a grisly dismemberment in a butcher shop and a prolonged sequence involving a severed hand.
Another major set piece follows the gang’s surveillance of a nightclub used by Colombians as a cocaine-dealing headquarters. The operation points toward a changing criminal economy, with cocaine offering a route for younger mobsters to build power at the expense of their elders.
Family pressure adds a second conflict
The show also uses fathers and sons as a recurring concern, especially through Glenn Keenan. The widowed NYPD officer tries to prevent his teenage son Danny from being pulled into the Westies’ world.
Sweeney has no children, and his effort to treat Jimmy as a surrogate son may leave him exposed. Jimmy’s relationship with Bridget Walsh adds another strain, as she helps with Westies business while remaining more committed to the cause of Irish liberation.
Bridget’s past returns when her former boyfriend, Brendan Cahill, asks her for help. She must decide whether to become involved in that fight again, creating a storyline that sits apart from the gang’s immediate struggle with the Gambinos.
Strong performances cannot fully escape familiar mob drama
According to www.theguardian.com, Tom Brittney and Sarah Bolger bring the clearest sense of purpose to their characters. Brittney gives Jimmy a mix of intelligence and idealism, while Bolger makes Bridget both steely and visibly uneasy.
Simmons gives Sweeney a weary and softer edge rather than unbroken authority, which reduces some of the character’s menace. The review also finds that John Gotti remains a recognizable ambitious Mafiosi figure rather than a fully distinctive threat.
Welliver’s Keenan is presented as compromised and exhausted, while several supporting characters remain closer to types than fully developed people. That leaves the series most effective when it leans into its outrageous violence, rough humor, and the instability of its criminal partnerships.
The Westies is available on MGM+ in the UK and Stan in Australia. Its appeal rests on the collision between a desperate Irish crew, an ascendant Italian faction, and the destructive choices that make their alliance impossible to sustain.
