Two major US TV networks have announced Irish-American crime dramas for the 2006-07 season, which they hope will become Irish versions of The Sopranos.
The new NBC show, The Black Donnellys, will be shot in New York and explores the lives of four Irish brothers involved in organised crime in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen area.
The story is loosely based on the Westies Irish-American gang that terrorised Irish neighbourhoods in the 1970s and 1980s. It features former Gaiety actor Olivia Wilde of The OC. NBC hopes the gritty drama will stem audience losses, which the consulting group, Katz Television, attributes to an overuse of "reality" shows. The Black Donnellys is by Paul Haggis, who wrote Million Dollar Baby and Crash. Haggis, from Ontario, Canada, adopted The Black Donnellys title from a Tipperary family who fell out of favour with other Irish families in Ontario and were massacred in February 1880.
NBC will compete with another network, Showtime, which is to launch its own Irish-American gangster series in the summer. Brotherhood stars Fionnuala Flanagan as the matriarch of a New England family. The story is loosely based on the life of gangster James "Whitey" Bulger and his politician brother Billy.
The series mirror two major movies in the pipeline. Martin Scorsese has almost completed his Irish-American gangster flick, The Departed, based on Whitey Bulger's gang and the corrupt Irish cops who worked for them. Jim Sheridan, meanwhile, is making Emerald City, based on Manhattan's Westies.