Who is Nastier--The Killer Elite  of “Gangs of London” or the Mafiosi of “The Sopranos”?

Ultimately, it may come down to the role of the common meat cleaver in crime dramas.

(Well, perhaps they’re not so common. My domicile lacks one.)

Whether in a kitchen or in a plastic-lined car trunk, the gleaming instruments are used, as one corporal in “The Sopranos” notes, for “dejointing.” And who can forget, how, late in the Sopranos run when scion Christopher is trying to cook up a kind of horror/mob mash-up film, the assembled gunsels lean heavily towards simply calling the projected blockbuster “Cleaver”?

 Just to cut—or chop—to the chase here, the “Gangs” menagerie of multifarious Brits (and their international confederates in crime) are simply nastier than even the aggressively violent Jerseyans of “The Sopranos.” (E.g., the cleaver in one ugly "Gangs" scrap is used very, very cringeably.) Which is not to knock the men of the Bada-Bing universe--the manifold virtues of the American show make it an indispensable part of our lifetime of small-screen viewing pleasures.

But if you’ve got the stomach for an even deeper dive into the really rough stuff, don’t sleep on “Gangs,” now airing its first two seasons on multiple streamers. 

 “Gangs” offers its own style of emotional intelligence, and in place of the multiple sons of Italy in Jersey’s “Guinea gulch,” offers a DEI  course in greedy instincts as displayed by Irish parvenus allied with crime-lords-of-color Brits, alongside Albanians, Pakistanis, Greeks, Kurds and more. (Hang in for now-available second season when the Algerians and others take on the season’s unifying villain, the arms-dealing Georgian-Mafia operator Koba.) 

 The point here is not to applaud sheer bloodthirstiness; this viewer, for one, loses interest quickly when shows give in to the familiar chatter of automatic weapons, the wails of fingernail removal, and the use of broken glass for impromptu barroom facials.

Such gore risks feeling all too same-y.  Thus, top marks for Elliot Carter, the undercover cop lead of “Gangs,” for effectively repurposing a saloon dart in the greatest public house brawl you may ever see.

 Just to even things up, our real introduction to Tony Soprano came as he grinningly rocketed a car across the grassy grounds of an office park to run down a yuppie businessman who had bragged about stiffing the family. (The subsequent punch in the nuts had the winning tagline, “I’ll give ya a bone! “ to enhance the vic’s bloody compound fracture.

See how easy it is to descend into enjoying a bloody fracas? We’re not in Paris with Emily anymore.

So let’s repeat—what makes these shows special (and each of us could name five or so more near this level)—is the simple humanity that even their angry, performatively cold-hearted miscreants at times reveal. There is a certain weltschmerz, a certain giddy standard of violence arising out of the characters' cynical if learned belief that life really is about the money.

 Yes, it often has much to do  with a bad dad, and, to cue up darker tragedies, with a bad mom.

 David Chase’s journey from unhappy suburban kid in Jersey to nearly unparalleled stature as a creator and show runner is tellingly chronicled in the two-part “Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos” on MAX. Because it’s exemplary, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, the story unfolds showing a warts-and-all martinet who seems alienated from  his colleagues, from we wonderful people out in the dark, and even himself.

A specimen line in which he addresses for Gibney the high body count over the six seasons: “This is a mob show. People gotta go,”

 The sometimes painful history implies, if not asserts, that James Gandolfini’s sometime alcoholism was fueled by playing Tony, and that such stress helped kill the big guy at just 51 years of age in 2013.  When Tony sits before Lorraine Bracco's shrink Dr. Melfi in the introductory passages of both show and doc, and confesses, he's "the sad clown,” you are free to speculate if the plaint is coming from Anthony (as she infantalizes his name), Gandolfini himself, or the dyspeptic Chase.

 Chase candidly adds in still gnarlier psychic torments–his remote dad we might compare to Dominic Chianese’s intolerable Uncle Junior, and the harridan Nancy Marchand made into a scarifiying resurrection of Chase’s own insufferably bitter mother.

 To see this psychological portrait play out in excerpted scenes and backstage moments is to see the sources and meanderings of the show’s deep character portraits, all offered by insiders. Bracco is dishy and fun, Edie Falco amusingly candid, Michael Imperioli insightful and wry, Steve Van Zandt chorlingly philosophical--the insights spill out steadily.

No surprise, then, that amidst the bathtub dissections, the avid rain of lead knocking Big Pussy onto the floor of the big motorboat, the hideous chase in the woods to dispatch Adriana  (Drea DeMatteo, you are a trouper then and now!), and amidst the bloody fits and starts and teeth on curbstones, the kinetic eruptions of both series are given a blinkered, screw-you reasonableness. In Tony’s world, more than in "Gangs," the meaningless beatdowns communicate as much to us as the motivated ones.

 All that said, he two series, great as they individually may be, are apples and oranges, or, um, ligature  strangulation versus using your hands. 

Indeed, the opening moments of “Gangs” will grab you almost physically, as a dreamlike camera move delivers the London cityscape upside down. The reveal is that the shot involves us in a merciless, vengeful frolic—we've been pulled into the point of view of a hapless lad who got involved with the killing of head Wallace family honcho Finn Wallace (Colm Meaney).

No worries, we’ll get to enjoy comportment lessons with the great Irish actor via flashbacks in a fearsome life study to come.

And then--well , look, fair warning, the show gets distressing. (Indeed, that’s their point. And mine.)

Checking out interviews done with co-creator Gareth Evans, you unexpectedly meet a solid, bearded Welshman full of humble bonhomie. As a film director he made a name for himself with the cult fave “The Raid,” and turned to the “Gangs”  Sky TV production in time to get the needed footage in the can before Covid clamped down, as over time he handed a fair few writing and directing chores over to others. 

 That said, he hopped back in for the first season’s  Episode 5, and despite the 24 minutes of  Wick-level slaughter first erasing yobbo rural orphans– and soon their adoptive mom--mesnwhile ventilating some perseverating “pikeys,” (slam-master Guy Richie also refers to Gypsies in this fashion), as we unrelievedly see death roaming. It offers death by blunt and sharp objects, by vindictive bomblets,by shot-gunnings and an array of chundering weapons, but each rub-out is somehow motivated. (Even those of the attacking operatives, ex-Danish special forces– yep--who have been recruited by a particularly treacherous top crook.) 

Evans, who freely adapted "Gangs" from a 2006 video game, has said he shows his own coming-of-age son action films selectively: “I’m nervous about my kids seeing action without emotional consequences…especially in a movie that might be rated PG-13, but just because it doesn’t show much blood. That, to me, is more risky than watching an action movie where you’re aware of the characters’ pain and suffering.”

Which is precisely why his own rather operatic scenarios work for we grown-ups.

 One more overlap the Sopranos and the London gangs feature is in eschewing the idea of good guys looking to uphold the law.

The inheritor of the vast wealth and deep problems left by Meany’s character is played as a seething mini-despot by Joe Cole--though he’s actually not as cagey as his misery-gut, druggie brother Billy. It’s inside Billy’s everybody-in-my-family-is crazy point of view where we viewers sometimes shelter. This is true particularly when mom Marian—in a quietly terrifying performance by Irish actress Michelle Fairley—is demonstrating just how far she’ll go to own the city and her many pricey silk blouses. (In this show, certain close-ups ask you to decide if that’s blood spatter or polka dots on that set of high heels.) 

 In a tickle of transatlantic synchronicity, Cole, who came up via stage work, became available when some American-based Sicilian Mafiosi assassinated his “Peaky Blinders” character via, well, conventional means (submachine gun).

Cole’s been touted by his fans as a  potential James Bond, but even more intriguing idea,  if they’ll finally give the role to a black actor, is showcased with Sope Diriisu’s Elliot. A glowering and magnetic presence who’s played Coriolanus for the Royal Shakespeare Company, he’ll tell his key adversary that he’s combating “your filthy greed” because, “My whole life I’ve seen people like you get away with it.”

 The takeaway, and the moral center of the show, is found in that climactic moment. Perhaps that’s why the Brit series is so relatable compared to the claustrophobically ethnic, jestingly vicious world of the Sopranos. I mean, who in America would believe the story of a spoiled private-school kid whose father is casually cruel and leaves him a major real estate fortune, only to see the son become unhinged, incompetent and power-mad? 

 Right?