“We gotta send a message. Keep outta Hell’s Kitchen.”
So says J.K. Simmons’ character, Irish mob boss Eamon Sweeney, in the trailer for the new MGM+ crime drama, The Westies, which premieres on July 12th, 2026.
Anything involving crime drama and New York City immediately has my attention, and The Westies has a particularly intriguing angle as it involves “the construction of the Jacob Javits Convention Center on the Westies’ home turf in Hell’s Kitchen” during the early 1980s.
Let’s take a little side trip here: I’m from Long Island, and first visited what New Yorkers call the Javits Center in the late ‘80s. I remember the trip vividly as heading into Manhattan as a pre-teen was a big deal, and the top destination that day was a car show, the New York International Auto Show, at the Javits Center.
I wasn’t a huge car guy then or now, but I was excited to check out the Batmobile that was featured in Tim Burton’s Batman movie, starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, which was a tremendous thing going on in my life at the time. I recall the hot NYC summer day, the very long walk over to the Javits Center on the west side of Manhattan on 11th Avenue, and getting to indulge on hot dogs sold from a “real” NYC hot dog cart.
I was vaguely aware that gangs and mobsters were a real thing at the time – one lesson I ingested from my parents on Long Island was to never change garbage company carriers, lest you risk getting trash “delivered” on your own, Sopranos-style.*
* This is one reason among many that The Sopranos has long reigned supreme on Pop Thruster’s best 100 TV shows ever.
I’ve always been fascinated by mob stories and the history of New York City, so therefore the idea behind The Westies interests me greatly.
Whether or not The Westies can deliver the goods remains to be seen. This kind of story has been told before – graft flowing from a large construction project, Irish mob versus Italian mafia, made men getting whacked and the consequences thereof, the cops getting called in when bodies start dropping, and so on.
But The Westies seems to be leaning into a stylized, fun if slightly gritty vibe, and J.K. Simmons leads a strong cast that includes Titus Welliver (he of Bosch fame), Jessica Frances Dukes, Tom Brittney, Stanley Morgan, and Sarah Bolger.
One major liability for The Westies that has nothing to do with the show itself: the fact that it’s marooned on MGM+, which falls under the helm of yet another paid subscription service. While I would happily check out The Westies if it were available on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu or… you get the point, I’m not sure that I’ll ever get to this one until it’s at least available for rental or purchase a la carte via some other service.