Boardwalk Empire

What’s it about?

Boardwalk Empire charts Atlantic City power broker Nucky Thompson’s rise through Prohibition-era crime, corruption and politics.

Starring

Steve Buscemi, Kelly Macdonald, Michael Pitt, Michael Shannon, Stephen Graham, Shea Whigham, Michael Kenneth Williams, Jack Huston

An Introduction to Boardwalk Empire

Boardwalk Empire begins with Nucky Thompson (The Sopranos‘ Steve Buscemi) addressing temperance campaigners, nodding along to their toast to Prohibition as if he’s never made a dollar from the sale of illegal booze. He has, of course, profited hugely, and the scene sets the tone for all that is to come. Thompson has a certain kind of oily charm that makes you understand why Atlantic City gave him the keys to the place.

As treasurer, Nucky controls the money, the police and the majority of the men who believe they are running enterprises without him. The real business is happening outside the hall, however. Under cover of the darkness, whisky is being loaded into trucks, and the men loading the trucks know the law is theirs to ignore.

Restless after the war, Jimmy Darmody (Dawson’s Creek’s Michael Pitt) is recruited to drive one of the shipments. His mother Gillian (Life On Mars US’s Gretchen Moll) watches him leave with the brooding dread of someone who has already lost too much. In Chicago, meanwhile, a young enforcer named Al Capone (Adolescence’s Stephen Graham) is busy with his own muscle work, and while it’s a detail that doesn’t seem hugely significant in the moment, it’s a good indicator of where this story is going.

The convoy quickly gets into trouble once they are on the road. Hijackers attack the trucks, and it’s not long before a simple bootlegging mission becomes a deadly battle. Guns emerge, and Boardwalk Empire doesn’t miss a beat in demonstrating that this world is as much about violence as it is about booze and making deals.

Nelson Van Alden (Man Of Steel’s Michael Shannon), a Prohibition agent with the passion and obsession of a man who truly believes in the cause, is introduced watching from the shadows, taking notes and judging everyone before him.

In a few short minutes, the entire moral landscape of the show is revealed: hypocrisy dressed as virtue, ambition as loyalty, and violence as business as usual.

Summary

Boardwalk Empire is a study of a man who thinks he can manipulate all aspects of a system that is fundamentally corrupt, right up until he finds out he can’t. In the 1920s Nucky Thompson rules Atlantic City, and Boardwalk Empire spends its time demonstrating how that sort of power operates: through threats, favours, flattery, and by smiling sweetly at people you’re subtly ruining.

The whole thing is driven by Prohibition, which has turned a fairly ordinary seaside town into a hub of bootlegging, gambling and all manner of vice the law had recently outlawed. The show is rich in period detail: the houses, the suits, the speakeasies, the sense of a country deluding itself about what it really wants.

Boardwalk Empire goes beyond the regular remit of a gangster drama by delving deeply into the lives of the people around Nucky alongside our enigmatic anti-hero. There’s Margaret (Trainspotting’s Kelly Macdonald), whose journey from a poor immigrant wife to something far more complicated gives the show its conscience. Then there’s Jimmy, torn between the war he can’t leave behind and the criminal empire he’s destined to inherit.

There’s also Nucky’s brother, Eli (American Hustle’s Shea Whigham), who is resentful of being doomed to always stand a step behind him. Al Capone and “Lucky” Luciano (Tulsa King’s Vincent Piazza) are among the real-life characters that wander through the narrative, lending Boardwalk Empire a feel of fiction that’s only a few degrees removed from fact.

The writing never feels like it’s in a hurry. It allows its characters to lounge in rooms and converse themselves into trouble, something that’s more captivating than it sounds. While Boardwalk Empire is undeniably about crime, its focus is more on the machinery that allows crime to appear respectable – and the toll that machinery takes on those who stand close enough to touch it. It’s lighthearted at times, brutal at others, and never quite lets you settle.

Check out the Series Trailer here: