'Mob City' tries to tread familiar ground

"Come to Los Angeles! The sun shines bright, the beaches are wide and inviting, and the orange groves stretch as far as the eye can see. There are jobs aplenty, and land is cheap. Every working man can have his own house, and inside every house, a happy, all-American family. You can have all this, and who knows... you could even be discovered, become a movie star... or at least see one. Life is good in Los Angeles... it's paradise on Earth." Ha ha ha ha. That's what they tell you, anyway."— Sid Hudgens, "L.A. Confidential"

"L.A. Confidential" was arguably the best movie of 1997. It didn't win Best Picture — that honor went to "Titanic" — but it might be the most favorably remembered of the big films that year. And in the time since its release, it's been oft copied, usually to little success.

It's not just the big screen that has tried to re-capture the period piece glory of "L.A. Confidential," but the small screen as well. In the newer versions of the DVD for "L.A. Confidential" you get the failed pilot for the 2003 TV adaptation of the film. You can see why it fell flat and why — despite a decent enough cast — it just couldn't work as a weekly series.

Other TV shows have captured the period element and the mob element better — such as HBO's beautiful, but sometimes empty "Boardwalk Empire." But people still like to come back to Los Angeles in the 1940s to tell the same stories of Mickey Cohen, Bugsy Siegel and the lot time and again.

"Mob City," the latest TNT original drama from showrunner Frank Darabont and based on the novel "L.A. Noir" tries to tread that familiar ground once more. So far six episodes have been produced and the limited series is running in three installments on Wednesday nights this month. The first two episodes bowed on December 4.

Darabont is no stranger to limited series adapted from source material. He was the original showrunner for "The Walking Dead," which built into a TV phenomenon through it's six-episode initial offering. Darabont was given the boot in season two, but the show he built continues to wow audiences.

Darabont is also no stranger to period pieces — having given the world "The Shawshank Redemption," arguably one of the five greatest movies of all time, and "The Green Mile."

The problem with "Mob City" is that it lacks a hook. It doesn't have the cultural relevance of zombies, as "The Walking Dead" did, and it doesn't have the depth and emotional relevance of his best projects, like "The Shawshank Redemption." Instead it hews closer to "Boardwalk Empire." It's beautifully made but feels a bit like empty calories. Only Darabont doesn't have an HBO budget or casting.

Jon Bernthal felt like a weak link to me on "The Walking Dead," where his Shane was dispatched not long after Darabont himself. His lead cop, Joe Teague, lacks punch. He is another in a long line of anti-heroes, but he's not that interesting so far. It's hard to tell what he's trying to accomplish and what his motivation really is, and we're a third of the way through the series.

I like the idea of "Mob City" and a lot of the casting, but the first two episodes felt a little disappointing. The show has some time to grow, but at this point it's hard to tell what they're aiming for. Mostly, the first two episodes made me yearn to watch something better done.