Guy Ritchie's Paramount+ Gangster Series Has A Reunion 45 Years In The Making

Published Jul 19, 2026, 12:30 PM EDT After joining Screen Rant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers. Paramount+ is about to premiere the return of a Guy Ritchie megahit that debuted in March 2025, reuniting two legendary stars of the big screen in the process. What’s especially fitting about this reunion is that it returns both actors to the genre through which they first crossed paths, all the way back in 1980. Tom Hardy might be the main face of MobLand, but it’s the star power of Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan that elevates the show above the level of a typical action-heavy crime thriller. The pair have experience rendering British gangster stories onscreen together, too, as they both appeared in The Long Good Friday early in their respective careers. This classic of the genre was actually Pierce Brosnan’s first role on the silver screen, and features Mirren as its lead actress. A perfect British movie for fans of the gangster genre, The Long Good Friday brought Bob Hoskins to the attention of Hollywood, and influenced countless crime releases that followed in its wake. Arguably the filmmaker impacted more than any other by the 1980 release was none other than Guy Ritchie, who has cited it as a key inspiration for his work during numerous interviews. Ritchie’s best movies clearly draw on The Long Good Friday’s innovative approach to dialogue, plotting, and the stylized construction of long-based criminal underworlds. MobLand Reunited Pierce Brosnan & Helen Mirren In A Gangster Story After 45 Years When it first arrived on Paramount+ in 2025, MobLand was the first screen release to bring Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren together since The Long Good Friday in 1980. It was in this movie that Brosnan made his debut on the big screen at the age of 27, playing a member of the Irish Republican Army. Meanwhile, Mirren stars as the well-to-do girlfriend of gangster Harold Shand, the film’s protagonist played by Bob Hoskins. It’s fitting, then, that Mirren and Brosnan should reunite onscreen 45 years later as the couple at the head of another British gangster outfit, the Harrigan family, in Guy Ritchie’s hugely successful TV series. Since MobLand’s first season, the two actors have also appeared together in the cast of The Thursday Murder Club, Netflix’s adaptation of the bestselling novel by Richard Osman. Yet, it’s their return as Conrad and Maeve Harrigan in MobLand season 2 that’s filling crime genre fans with a sense of excitement and anticipation. This follow-up season will see Brosnan and Mirren’s characters become even more trigger-happy, as their criminal empire faces more threats from rival gangsters, as well as increasing uncertainty around the loyalties of Tom Hardy’s fixer Harry Da Souza. But these veteran actors have seen it all before, in the classic movie they made together at the beginning of the 1980s. The Long Good Friday Is Even Better Than MobLand The Long Good Friday is a must-see movie for fans of British gangster thrillers. Combining the grandeur of The Godfather with the slow-burning suspense of Martin Scorsese’s work in the genre, the film also laid the blueprint for every characterization of cockney mobsters in cinema and television that came after it. Its wisecracking dialogue and kinetic visual style are foundational to Guy Ritchie’s entire oeuvre. At the same time, the movie’s extraordinary final scene has never been bettered by anything in the British gangster genre since. The scene adds a level of depth to Harold Shand that none of Ritchie’s characters have ever revealed. MobLand may be one of the most pulsating thrillfests on television right now, but it ultimately doesn’t hold a candle to The Long Good Friday. The 1980 movie remains a touchstone of British crime storytelling. It’s also among the high points of Helen Mirren’s stellar career, and something a young Pierce Brosnan was lucky to be a part of. The Long Good Friday Release Date February 26, 1981 Runtime 114 Minutes Director John Mackenzie Writers Barrie Keeffe MobLand Release Date March 30, 2025 Network Paramount+ MobLand explores the intense conflict between two rival mob families whose escalating feud endangers both their criminal empires and the lives entangled in their violent world.