J.K. Simmons is an Oscar winner for a reason; he could read from a DoorDash menu and make it compelling to watch. In his new MGM+ series The Westies, he plays the ruthless boss of an Irish-American crime organization in the grimy environment of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen in the early 1980s.

THE WESTIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: In a warehouse, a young guy is holding a gun on what looks like a mafia-type figure.

The Gist: The young guy holding the gun is Davey O’Brien (Dan Reilly), a foot soldier for the Westies, an Irish organized crime group that runs things in Hell’s Kitchen on the west side of Manhattan. The organization is run by Eamon Sweeney (J.K. Simmons), and has seen their power and influence overwhelmed by the Italian mob, namely the Gambino crime family. The guy being held hostage, Vincent Siccaro (Michael Rispoli), is a capo in the Gambino family.

Sweeney and his guys, including right-hand man Jimmy Roarke (Tom Brittney) go into the warehouse to keep Davey from doing anything serious and spark a mob war. He and Jimmy have to remind Davey that they’re now working with the Italians, not kidnapping them for tiny ransoms like they used to do. But right before letting Siccaro go, Sweeney kills Davey. He later tells Jimmy, who is incensed, that Davey was becoming a wild card and had to go.

As much as Sweeney doesn’t like kowtowing to the Italians, the stakes are high, with the Javits Center being constructed on the Westies’ home turf, and he got the group a piece of the huge racketeering pie that is available to them. If they don’t cooperate with the Gambinos, the Westies will be shut out of that.

When Sweeney is summoned to meet with fast-rising Gambino underboss John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headly), he’s told that the Westies have to “silence” a union leader popular in the Irish community. At the same time, Jimmy’s friend Mickey Flanagan (Stanley Morgan) is being released from Bellvue, and he insists he’s well enough to work for Sweeney again. Jimmy’s girlfriend, Bridget Walsh (Sarah Bolger), is asked by a former IRA colleague (and ex), Brendan Cahill (Allen Leech), to “babysit” a rocket launcher he’s smuggled into New York for a big plan he’s looking to execute.

In the meantime, a beat cop named Glenn Keenan (Titus Welliver), is recruited by FBI Special Agent In Charge Birdie Polk (Jessica Frances Dukes) to join their task force to bring down the Gambinos. The plan is for him to get info from the Westies, given his background. What Polk doesn’t know is that Keenan grew up with Sweeney and takes payments from the Westies to look the other way; Sweeney encourages Keenan to join the task force and report back to him. But Keenan’s biggest concern is that his estranged son Danny (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong) doesn’t get involved with the Westies.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Westies, created by Chris Brancato and Michael Panes, reminds us of other crime dramas about the Irish-American mob, like Brotherhood or The Black Donnellys.

Our Take: Like the aforementioned shows about the Irish-American mob, The Westies gives viewers a fair amount of Irish tropes, like people sitting around a pub drinking Guinness, needle drops from the Dropkick Murphys, and thugs in leather jackets and newsboy caps. What The Westies has that many of those other shows didn’t is J.K. Simmons and, to a lesser extent, Titus Welliver.

Simmons is excellent here as Eamon Sweeney. Sweeney is ruthless as the Westies’ leader, to the point where he has no compunction with shooting a loyal footsoldier in the head to keep him from screwing things up for them, and then show up to his funeral and actually seem regretful that he had to do it. When he’s being ordered around by Gotti, you can see in Simmons’ face that he hates being pushed around by the Italians, but he also is keeping his eyes on the prize, which is the huge payday associated with the Javits Center grift.

Welliver’s character, Glenn Keenan, seems to be a typical crooked veteran cop who has been on the job for decades and is counting the days to retirement while taking his kickbacks from Sweeney. But there is certainly more to his story, and the story of his and Sweeney’s frenemyship, just from what we can see in the once scene that Simmons and Welliver share in the first episode. They’re contemporaries who are from the same neighborhood and ran in the same circles, but one became a Westie and the other became a cop, albeit a corrupt one.

Their story is the one we find intriguing in the early going. The mob hierarchy between the Italians and the Irish brings a somewhat novel dynamic to this 1980s organized crime story, but it’s not novel enough to be interesting. Jimmy’s struggles to keep his unhinged friend Mickey from getting himself and others killed and Bridget’s struggle to keep her IRA past in check have the potential to be good stories, but they also feel a bit generic, despite good performances.

Performance Worth Watching: We mentioned Simmons and Welliver, so we’ll talk about Sarah Bolger, who has a potentially meaty role as Bridget, who is going to be pulled back into her IRA past by Brendan.

Sex And Skin: Some blurry toplessness in one scene, but that’s about it.

Parting Shot: After Sweeney orders Jimmy to shoot Mickey, Jimmy shoots someone else instead, and Sweeney says, “Do you know the fuckin’ troubles you just caused us?” Jimmy’s reply: “We’ve always got troubles.”

Sleeper Star: Jessica Frances Dukes plays Agent Birdie Polk as appropriately tough, weary and snarky, like when she tells Keenan that she’s the Special Agent In Charge, she then follows it up with, “I know, right? They even gave me a nameplate.”

Most Pilot-y Line: The way that Jimmy and Mickey “silence” the union leader doesn’t seem to have any repercussions, given what it seemed like everyone understood Gotti’s instructions to Sweeney were.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Westies is a servicable crime drama thanks to the performances of Simmons and Welliver and the potential for their stories to yield interesting drama. The rest of the show is OK, but nothing that will stick in our minds after we watch the series.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.