Treme and trhe Boardwalk Empire

As events unfold in Libya it is difficult to concentrate on the everyday, or matters of enjoyment and pleasure. I watched the Sky Atlantic first showing of the 80 minute pilot episode of Treme which deals with the impact of Cyclone Katrina on the City of New Orleans.

Of all the cities in the USA New Orleans has always been the one which interested me since becoming a devotee of New Orleans Jazz and I became familiar with many of the streets from numbers such as Basin Street Blues, Canal Street Blues, North Rampart Street, St Louis and Bourbon Street .

Then I quickly learned of the prostitution, drug taking and criminality perhaps no different from other cities, but made more colourful by the participating Jazz musicians who came to international attention and openly referred to their experiences of playing in the “cat” houses and getting “high” to do so. It was later that I also learned that the America system of crime bosses originated in the town, leading to the participation in the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Amazingly inquiries said there was no evidence that the crime boss at the time was a mafia lord or with having the Mayor, politicians and police in his pocket as was the custom for decades.

The reputation of the city from crime and vice may have been one factor in the failures of the city to deal effectively with Cyclone despite having been given adequate and appropriate warning. Their legitimate defence was that they were to know that the badly rebuilt flood defence system would fail in the way it did.

The show Treme concentrates on one of the working class neighbourhood immediately off the French Quarter, called Treme bordering Canal, St Louis and Rampart Streets and containing the Armstrong Park centre, although he had no direct connections with the area, His music, especially the Blues can be said to have been borne out of the slavery of the deep South and where musicians such as Alphonese Picou from the early days of the music through to Louis Prima and Alex Chilton once lived through until last year. The area produced a succession of street marching and playing brass bands around which the pilot film is based.

The production also brings out that the cyclone was not the primary caused of the destruction but the failure of the levees. This is brought out vividly by John Goodman who plays a university English professor together with his Civil Rights Lawyer wife. His character is based on a real life Blogger. His wife takes up the investigation of what happened to the younger brother of a woman who owns and runs a tavern in the community. Another young woman runs a restaurant which is struggling to keep going especially as her casual boyfriend tries to drink and eat any profits. He appears a self centred part time disc jockey and musician but who also campaigns against injustices, mainly directed at himself or so was my impression from the first episode. He comes across as more of angry young man that John Osborne’s character although a Rebel with a cause!

Significantly more appealing is Albert, a Mardi Graz chief who returns to find his home uninhabitable but insists or staying in the bar of an absent friend, a decision opposed by his daughter who brings him down and then his son who has made a home for himself in the New York Jazz scene. Albert wants to reassemble his group one of whom is earning a fortunate trucking out debris for the Federal Emergency Agency. Another musician is the estranged Trombonist husband of the Tavern owner who returns destitute, having lost his car, borrows money for taxis and pleads for paid jobs. Many contemporary musicians and bands feature in the first episode and series. What interested me and made the programme an essential future viewing was the issues being raised.

1800 people lost their lives in the Hurricane with just under 1500 of these in New Orleans. Responsibility for the failure of the flood protection system has been laid squarely at the door of the Army Corps of Engineers as the designers and builders of the system but despite the commencement of a law suit the problems was that the Federal Agency could not be held financially liable because of immunity granted under a 90 year old piece of national legislation.

The way the catastrophe was handled has also been the subject of formal criticism including of the Federal Agency Management Committee, State and Local government officials and the New Orleans Police Department leading to the effective sacking of principals. There are vivid pictures of the police preventing some trapped citizens from moving to safe areas from the Gretna and Crescent City and of the over crowding and lack of measures to pass on ten of thousands of refugees who congregated at the Superdome and which required an expenditure of $140 million to bring back into use. There were similar problems about provide sleeping, food and water and adequate sanitation at the Convention centre. A major problem was to find locations for the refugees to be rehoused. The overriding impression was the lack of appropriate action was due to those involved being predominantly black and poor. It will be interesting to see how the first season of ten shows handles these issues. A second season is already in hand.

Talking of the role of the Mafia in American city society, The Boardwalk Empire continues to confirm my impression of a long term linking of crime, politics and the trade unions, the police and judicial system, and the inability of the Federal government to bring about fundamental and long term change. The programme while centred on Atlantic City also connects with the rise of Al Capone and the fictional character of Jimmy.

In Atlantic City Nucky is busy planning his surprise birthday party. He is becoming more and more aware that his concubine is ignorant and self centred. Margaret the woman whose husband he has murdered by his brother as the patsy for the murder of the New York Mobsters and who he has got a job in the classy dress shop, is asked to deliver a dress to the party for the concubine to wear after her surprise, jumping out of a large fake birthday cake. Margaret appears not put out to find much drinking and celebrating going on but is evidently jealous of the position and lifestyle of the concubine. She has a dance with Nucky while she waits for the surprise to take place and is introduced to some of his friends and he is impressed by her ability to converse compared to that of the concubine. She steals clothes from her employer.

In the next episode she wakes to find barrels of beer being delivered to a nearby property. She reports the development to the Temperance League and goes with the leader of the group to see Nucky to report the development. He promises to sort it out. When nothing happens and a further quantity is delivered she confronts those involved and finds the organiser is James Neary, City Alderman and local party executive who she was introduced to at the Party. She dresses up in the clothing stolen from the dress shop and goes to Nucky. She is ignored and then sees the Alderman go into Nucky’s suite. Feeling jilted she destroy stolen underwear when she returns home and then turns to the government Prohibition enforcer who initially shows no interest overwhelmed by the extent to which prohibition is being ignore in the city and which has also become a distribution centre for imported and local manufacturing. However she gets his attention when she is able to identify the location and the involvement of the Alderman.

The focus of the episode in Atlantic city is preparations for St Patrick’s day. and in particular the evening celebration of civic worthies, Masonic style in which local midgets are employed to perform as leprechauns dancing and bringing baskets of goodies, bottle of whisky but no beer because of an earlier raid. Nucky’s police chef brother insists on making a speech in which he attacks the British and appeals to the nationalism of those in the room. This however leads to a rowdy argument between those who were born in Ireland and came to the USA after the revolution and Independence, and creation of the six counties of Northern Ireland, and those who were born in the USA of Irish parents/grandparents who came over previously. The speech has to be cut short by Nucky who makes jokes to calm things down. Previously Nucky has pressed for Federal funds to improve the road structure north and is told by a senator that he cannot expect to have everything. The Federal Enforcer then arrives to arrest Alderman Neary. Nucky then goes to see Margaret to find out what she is up to and wants. We know that she wants him and the life style he can provide her and her children.

In contrast Jimmy’s former partner appears to be remaining loyal to him and refuses the offer her mother to give up her son to her and lead a new life as a single woman. In the previous episode Nucky has pressed his brother for action in relation to the hanging of a black employee of his partner running the local distillery. A Ku Klux Klan meeting is raided and the leader taken into custody and tortured. As a consequence the police are satisfied that the Klan was not responsible for the lynching.

In Chicago Al Capone plays a prank on Jimmy while in bed with a whore at the brothel which Capone’s boss has a financial interest. Jimmy is damaged in one ear after Capone shoots a blank cartridge. Capone and Jimmy visit a bar in the territory of the rival Mafia group and beat up the owner after he refuses to switch to them. There is a meeting between Capone Jimmy and the rivals in which they appear to agree on a 50 50 split of interests in the contested area. However the rivals were only playing for time and one of the gang visits the brothel and sleeps with Jimmy’s favourite and slashes her face from the forehead destroys an eye and cut her mouth to chin. Jimmy remains loyal to her but is under pressure to make up the loss of earning power at $100 a day. Pressure is also exerted on her by the other girl’s for putting off the customers. The girl then takes her own life.

From Mad Dogs to American Idol and Saigon 's Year of the Cat to Question Time

I begin with a film which I presume was made for Television called Saigon: Year of the Cat starring Judy Dench as a senior official in a bank in the capital who appears to have been there for years if not a decade or more and establishes a relationship with a USA embassy official over the last year before the abandonment of the capital to the north led communists. To date I can find no reference to the film on the Internet despite being written by David Hare and with Dame Dench. I am not surprised because it is an odd film, British colonial in style, perhaps intentional, in which the principle characters live in their own world, playing bridge at the club, insulated against the reality of the war and the life of the majority of the people. You feel that the character portrayed has been living a better life than she would have experienced at home and that she is experienced in serious physical relationships with men.

Her lover in this instance prepares a report on the situation in the south which indicates that the war is effectively lost and that every effort should be made to o take to safety all those who have assisted the USA. The Ambassador sits on the analysis because defeat and withdrawal is not an option and he believes that the provision of more funds will turn the tide and secure the south.

There is an excellent account of those last few days and hours as panic spread in the city. There is a shot of records of contacts being left in the embassy as the staff rush to exit taking basic personal possession with them. There is also a shot of someone who was promised to be picked up, still waiting but getting no answer.

The scene however was brilliantly exploited theatrically in the stage musical Miss Saigon which I saw in London three or even four times. I must check sometime. At one level Dame Judy does not appear have the figure and personality of someone to have passionate all absorbing sexual based affairs with men, married or single but I return to my experience where as a young social worker I was asked to deal with the children left behind with a severely disabled mother after the husband had run off with the wife in another family. The running away couple were a most unlikely pair in terms of their physical appearance and lifestyle. In terms of my own experience when I was a young man in work at sixteen there was a secretarial office worker ten to fifteen years older than myself who was known to be having a relationship with a much younger man working in the same office. Nine years later when I went into the staff restaurant at an East Anglian local authority where I was commencing a summer practical work placement of three months, I met the same individual who in today’s jargon, hit on me offering the use of her car on hearing that I was getting about the large county using public transport. I did not take up the offer, although with hindsight this was more because I did not fancy the woman rather than any morality question.

I was more engaged by the second episode of Mad Dogs, a Sky new drama contribution set in the extractive Spanish Island of Majorca which I have visited once and had a memorable time.

Four middle aged friends, two declared married with children, one a corporate lawyer and another a financial adviser, a third a lecturer in psychology, the fourth unemployed, accept the invitation for a short holiday with a fifth who has an isolated villa with grounds and swimming pool. Interestingly they accept the invitation without their partners or families. The five go off into the city centre for a night out clubbing during which one of the four, married, with children brings back and spends the night with a holiday maker. His behaviour angers one of the four our of proportion to the behaviour suggesting the man has significant problems in his own life. In fact all four emerge as having problems in their lives in the UK and being unsettled which goes some way to explaining their willingness to participate in such a gathering. The reason for the holiday is that the fifth (Ben Chapman) is giving up his Spanish Mainland property development business to live a life of pleasure on the Island. There is no reason given why he is on his own.

They go off on a fishing diving trip on a yacht which only after departing does it emerge has been borrowed, The Yacht is left in as isolated cove under the cliff and they use a dingy to go ashore and then hike back over the hills to the villa. They realise their host is up to something and using them and they demand explanation after the evening meal

A height challenged man enters wearing a large face head mask of a grinning Tony Blair and shoots Ben in the head splattering blood over those closest and all over the table when the man falls across.

The killer, who is wearing white gloves then uses the weapon to establish one of the four as the killer with his DNA and goes off in a siren sounding police vehicle. The four react to the situation in accord with the personalities revealed so far revealed, some saying they must go to the police after contacting the British embassy, some pointing out they will be implicated in the killing and the stealing of boat. They decide to bury the body in the grounds and remove all traces of the killing in time for the arrival of the cleaner housekeeper who they say is not needed for the day. Another police car arrives this time with a young attractive police woman seeking the whereabouts of the villa owner. They say he was suddenly called to the mainland. She is evidently suspicious but departs.

They then decide to remove traces of their presence from the yacht but while there another group arrive with £3 million Euros in exchange for the on board heroin. They are rebuked for no being at the agreed rendezvous and told to do better on the next run. Back at the villa a local dog disturbs the surface of the shallow grave so they decide to take the body to the Yacht. In the midst of this the police arrive again seeking to interview the four because of the owner of Yacht has been murdered.

The four men are interviewed separately providing inconsistent answers about their knowledge of the villa owner. One admits he had met with the owner when he visited the UK the previous month, a fact not revealed to the other three. Another, the financial adviser says he wants a lawyer present when asked if he has ever given financial advice to the Villa owner.

Earlier they had agreed a plan to hide the moeny in a hire car left at the airport. The female detective, or is she, spots the keys of car and asks where it is, it is said to have been left in town on the night out before the alleged party at the villa.

Although they deny knowledge of the boat the police detective returns for her glasses, and they allow her to enter a room unaccompanied and she has time to look at he video camera to see them joking about going out for the day on the boat trip.

As she arrives they pretend they cannot find the keys to open the gates during which time they try to hide the body in the freezer, finding they need to cut off the feet or the head to do so. A task for the next episode.

I kept an eye on Question time where there was brief reference to the developments in the Middle East in terms of the need to the UK to continue to sign up to Human rights and the European Court which was set up to act as beacon for those primarily in countries overtaken by Communist dictatorships at the end of the Second world war. The reason was the he decision that those added to the Sex Offenders Register in the UK should have the right to appeal against continuation on the register after completion of judicial punishments if they can show that they have changed their lives. The decision is the right to appeal not to be automatically removed from the register. As with some other serial crimes whose nastiness is such that the possibility of reform appears remote, I share the anxiety of many, I suspect with the majority that any reduction of monitoring and surveillance carries with it great risk. no principle can ever be absolute in the sense that some exceptions can never be justified. However in the balance between removing all risk and giving up basic freedoms I veer on the side of taking risks. I feel this about the threat of international and national terrorism. It was in my view an odd choice of first subject.

There has been a lot happening this week politically. The most significant decision was that the House of Lords pulled back from the brink to agreed to let the Alternative Vote Referendum be held on May 5th. While the Labour Party is split and the Conservatives overwhelmingly against, the championing by Nick Clegg means that the no vote is likely to predominate without the inclusion of a minimum 40% of the electorate voting. I was delighted that the 40% required was dropped because all that would been required is for the no votes to abstain to win as even with a 75% turn out in a general election government have not achieved 40% of eligible electorate in recent years. Given Labour’s success together with the extreme right wing in turning Nick Clegg into to the chief villain, his championing of the cause could be counterproductive. Much as also been made of the decision to drop the proposal to sell off some government controlled forests, notably the Forestry Commission held Kielder here in he North East as a means of raising money and reducing public management costs, Labour had done so quietly over the past decade without ensuring protection of public use and rights of way. Michael Heseltine made the good point that if a government never changes its mind under pressure it is attacked for being too tough and if it does respond to pressure it is then attacked for being too weak. The programme also confirmed by prejudices against Yvette Cooper who appears never to give an inch to the Government on any issue, finding fault in everything it does. There was praise in unusual quarters, Nigel Farage for one for Ian Duncan Smith’s plan to scrap the thirty benefits which cover the unemployed with a single assessment and payment system will ensure that it always pays to work if available than live on benefits. His measures will take two Parliaments to fully implement but it is to be hoped his will be one proposed change that worked. I cannot remember if it was during Question time or this week that the point was well made that only about one in five major change reorganisations work out well as intended.

Now for something very different. I have been fast forwarding through American Idol the present series without Simon Cowell after nine years in preparation for his new series based on the British successor. Randy Newman is still there with two new faces, Jennifer Lopez and the less well known Stephen Tyler, rocker looking led singer, song writer and instrumentalist of Aerosmith. No more the delicious Paula Abdul. I fast forward the auditions just to listen to those who can sing and from whom there is the possibility of finding the three or four who will eventually complete for the title. I take similar action with the Hollywood round now underway, avoiding the group singing stage because it tends to show the worst side of people and while it can eliminate some of those whose basic anti social traits were kept hidden, the consequence can be on others who will need protection for their talents to flourish. I guess this segment is showing that you have to possess considerable commercial potential to cope with the demands required by the corporation machine industry that developed. Over 300 went to Hollywood where the week’s events conclude on British TV tonight with 60. These sixty were then taken to a single destination Las Vegas to sing Beatles song to be reduced to forty. The judges then reduced this number between themselves to 20 which this year is going become a sudden death audience selection for the final teen, the five most successful male and females. It will be interesting to see if any of the excellent 15 year olds are successful.

Board Walk Empire and Blue Bloods

I am delaying my writing about events in Egypt and neighbouring nations as the situation worsens until there is a clear indications of what will happen. I have spent this week watching and listening to the various news channels but not exclusively

Sky Atlantic is a new drama channel which opened on Tuesday evening 1st of February 2011. The channel has exclusively acquired some current highly regarded drama series from the United Sates together with the re-showing of other favourites from Sky channels such 24 and the excellent Soprano’s.

I recorded to view later two of the most heralded new series and report than one has so far proved a major disappointment while the other, although geared for mainstream USA has potential because the focus is on one family of law enforces who have been written and acted as real people. Interestingly both series feature men affected by their involvement in war, one in the trenches of the first world war and the other in Iraq.

I begin with the best of the two, Blue Bloods, subtitled, New York, Finest, featuring Tom Selleck as the Police Commissioner who is widowed but has been spotted appearing with a date by one of his surviving three children. One a son has been killed, apparently in the line of duty, but the suspicion is that he was investigating a secret vigilante society within the service which has some 35000 officers with additional auxiliaries and school safety agents which brings the combined total to 45000. The Commissioner, unlike his counterpart in Greater London is expected to make press statements on the hoof although similar to police chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic they are subjected to continuous political scrutiny and pressure.

Unlike the Boardwalk Empire the Police Commissioner appears dedicated and uncorrupted whereas the police boss in 1920 Atlantic City is hand and glove with his criminal brother who is also the city Finance Chief. More of that later.

On Blue Blood a second son has returned from Iraq and his father suggests he needs counselling for his anger and use of illegal methods to catch criminals. The third son, the youngest, is the brightest who has been to college and has a girl socialite girl friend from a wealthy and influential family who approved of the relationship because the young man is a graduate of the Harvard Law School. However the situation is reported to have changed with his decision to become a basic grade trainee in the police force. The series opens at the training graduation ceremony presided over by his father and watched with pride by his fiancée. The other family member is an assistant District Attorney whose function is to prosecute those apprehended by her brothers. To add to the dynasty, Selleck is following in the footsteps of his father who from the first episode appears was forced into retirement as Police Commissioner for reasons yet to be disclosed.

In the first pilot episode we are introduced to family, wives, children and girl friends but the main story centres on a nine year old Latino girl who is snatched on her way home or to school. Does any responsible and sensible parent let 9 year olds go anywhere unescorted by an adult these days? The added problem is the girl requires a daily insulation injection and will comatose and die if she is not found in less than 24 hours. The major flaw in this story line is that not only does the kidnapper leaves the doll he used to attract the attention of the girl as she passed his white van by the roadside but inquiries reveal that this is a prototype test doll where only three have been sold in the state of New York and therefore the addresses of he purchasers are known. The odds on this be true are as good as my winning the national lottery.
They eliminate two and find the wife of the third who says she does not know his whereabouts and is divorcing him, having moved to the state from Miami Florida. The camera lets us know that she plays with a gold cross when talking and doing so in a somewhat guilty fashion. When they track the man down to a rooming house they find a blue van outside were a little scrape shows it has been repainted from white. That the kidnapper was able to arrange or do this himself within the time frame is also questionable. When the Detective son and his partner finds the man in a rooming house adjacent to the parked van he sends his partner out to radio in the arrest. He then water boards the man in the toilet, a feat unlikely to be possible in British made toilet bowls.

He is successful in finding out the location of the girl and she is rescued alive and reunited with her mother after a medical check. The mother visits the police HQ to deliver a cake with the girl to give their thanks for saving her life comparatively unharmed. The Detectives had found a communion dress and candles in their investigation. There is a scene where his assistant prosecutor sister berates him for the action which in addition to an Internal Affairs inquiry is bound to result in a failure to convict because evidence obtained under torture is inadmissible in court.

A district judge then gives the police the weekend to establish additional evidence to justify holding the man in custody in view of the allegations of torture. In attempting to help his son, Kelleck raises looking at cold cases across the country to see any similar characteristics as a 50 year old does not suddenly get the urge to kidnap a girl and act on it with such calculating organisation.

There is a family lunch at which the tensions between family members of the three generations emerge.

The new son policeman is at a dinner with his girl friend and two others and she becomes upset when he tells about his day which brings vividly to her the risks of injury and death he faces every day. They become quickly reconciled on his desire to be a policeman although this is a reality which all families of police, fire, and military personnel have to face when they are on active duty..

Later the son is approached by a secret FBI team investigating the secret vigilante organisation within the force and after rejecting their interest he reconsiders on being told that his brother may have been killed by these criminals within the present day force. In the Boardwalk Empire senior police offices are responsible for beating up before killing and framing an abusive husband for murders committed by a relative of the local crime lord.

Selleck also visits his father to report on professional and family matters and gain advice.

Colleagues going through cold case files come across the death of a nine year old girl in Florida with similar characteristics to the situation prevented in New York. On examining the files he sees a missing cross worn by the girl which looks similar to the one worn by the estranged wife of the kidnapper. On the reverse of the cross he finds the name of the murdered girl. By implication this means their will be a conviction for murder in Florida at which the kidnapping in New York will be taken into consideration thus reducing the pressure on the Detective regarding water boarding. It raises the issue of complicity on the part of the wife which is not raised in the episode.

Against the background of an organised conspiracy of vigilante police there is the issue of the moral justification or not of taking action to prevent the unnecessary death of a nine year girl. What if there a bomb set to go off within a limited time period. What action is or is not legitimate to force someone to reveal its location?
My understanding is that the series is devoted to each episode raising issues of what is right and wrong, how far should or can the justice system be stretched to cover such situations in getting the balance between the rights and interests of the victims of crime and the rights and interests of people suspected of crime?

There is nothing grey about the award winning Boardwalk Empire, directed in the pilot episode by Marin Scorsese. The series covers the commencement of prohibition and its lucrative addition to the wealth of the crime lords in Atlantic City, Chicago and New York.

The first two 90 mins period episodes 50 to 60 mins of actual drama, were hugely disappointing as they add nothing to our existing knowledge of the period and the acting and script is no better than OK. Despite the awards it is third rate Scorsese. Ok there is female flesh, sex and gratuitous violence to entertain, but what else?

In fairness I did some additional information about those times from the research undertaken before commencing the writing.

The story is based on the life of Enoch Lewis Thompson, known as Nucky, the criminal boss who controlled Atlantic City and County, its local government the ruling Republican Party machine, prostitution, gambling, extortion and bootlegging during prohibition. Born 1883 he came to power in the City in 1911 and held on to power until 1941 when he was sent to prison. He died in 1968.

When he was three his parents moved to the County where his father became alternating Sheriff and Under Sheriff living at two locations for two decades. His father and the County Clerk dominated the County and City Government with one other in an unholy triumph rates. There is no reference to their morality.
Nucky became Under Sheriff to his father and the following year, aged 23 he married a teenage girl from one the locations his family had lived. He became secretary of the local Republican Party and when the local political boss was convicted of corruption charges Nucky took over his position.

Atlantic City was dependent on Tourism and to give it the edge the Republican Party decided to allow gambling, prostitution and drinking on Sundays with the operatives paying tribute to the Party. This was his inheritance added to which there were personal payments for contracts and for jobs. Within five years his wife died and unfortunately I have no knowledge of the circumstances but a previous teetotaller he turned to drink. He switched official position according the most profitable and useful including publisher of a weekly paper and a bank director and once established he was approached to get a number of appointees into the State Governorship and US State Senate.

The TV series commences with Nucky established and in full control as Prohibition is put into effect and he speaks movingly to a temperance organisation and affects a pregnant young woman in the audience who unknown to him drinks heavily and beat hers which also distresses their two children. She seeks help and he gives her sufficient money to see her through the Winter. Her husband spots her arrive in the Rolls Royce of the Crime Lord so she gives a cover story but he finds and takes the money from her accusing her of prostitution although she is heavily pregnant.. When Nucky finds him gambling the money he takes it from him and the man goes home and beats his wife to the extent she needs the hospital. Nucky visits her in hospital and when he needs someone to take the rap for the killing of four bootleggers, he contacts his brother who arranges for the man to be beaten and killed and then blamed for the killings.
The real Nucky lived in a suite of rooms at the Ritz Carlton Hotel on the boardwalk, had a butler man Friday and a Chauffer and gave lavish parties. He was also very generous especially to poor voters particular the black community who did the domestic and service jobs

He built a convention Hall so the city could host all round conferences, including of crime bosses such as Al Capone (in 1932) although in the series Capone is a young man about to make his way.

From 1930 the Federal authorities were pointed in the direction of Thompson by the Hearst newspapers, because Thompson had taken too close an interest in the medial mogul‘s steady date showgirl. In 1933 with the end of Prohibition the City lost its attraction and his income fell substantially. His indictment was on tax evasion and he married a show girl ten days before starting a ten year sentence. He was 58 and she 33 years. He was paroled after four years and appeared to live a much quieter life with his wife and living with his brother. When he died the local paper admitted he was a big eater and drinker, womanizer and a lover of all fine things. It described him as political ruthless and amoral as well as remaining popular. There is no reference to responsibility for violence including killings.

In addition to Nucky and the Irish now widow with two children, the third central character in the series is Jimmy Darmody who is a protégé of Thompson and not a relative as I first thought. The effects of World War I service have left him ambitious and prepared to do anything to gain wealth and power and as the chauffer, he requests a greater role. He has a common law wife and child. He is also said in the TV production to be the natural child of Commodore Louis Kaestner : The real predecessor of Thompson who in the series is financial supported by him and appears to exercise power over him.
Nucky has set up a deal to provide a regular shipment of alcohol to other real life characters from New York and Chicago. One became head of the Jewish Mafia in New York, Arnold Rothstein, whose most notorious action was to fix the result of the 1919 world baseball series. His education and cultural style had great impact especially on Lucky Luciano who also features. His interests were gambling, and bootlegging during prohibition. He also controlled the important Maryland horse racing track and the outcome of races.

Rothstein comes to Atlantic City to commence a regular weekly deal on imported alcohol but instead of paying in advance wins $90000 from Nucky’s casino by cheating and then insists on using the money to buy the alcohol and to take the balance in cash. He was a millionaire by the age of 30. He used a corner of a famous restaurant on Broadway to transact business. He was shot dead with several theories that he was killed by or on the orders of his associate Dutch Schultz or because of a gambling debt he refused to settle.

In the first episode, with the same name as the series, Nucky and Jimmy visit a Funeral home where there is also a business making diluted whisky with added ingredients to make it taste original. The owner/manager gives Jimmy a glass of whisky looking Formaldehyde as a joke but Jimmy wants to kill him as a consequence. Later after the establishment of the special Prohibition FBI team they pick up Jimmy and he gives them the Funeral home in retaliation and to occupy their attention while he and Al Capone hijack the shipment of Alcohol intended for New York and which they sell to the Chicago crime bosses.

Al Capone loses his head when a deer comes out of the neighbour woods and they start to shoot Rothstein’s men. Al Capone is still a young pun as they say at this point, another driver general assistant like Jimmy. who works for the Fox - Johnny Torrio, an Italian American. It was Torrio who pressed the idea of a National Crime Syndicate. In addition to profiting from alcohol during prohibition, gambling and numbers, and prostitution, he was also into loan sharking, extortion and drugs. He also advocated conservative dressing and behaviour and the provision of legitimate businesses. An associate was Big Jim Colosimo whose interests were brothels, his restaurant and the voice of Caruso.

In real life Colosimo abandoned his wife and the aunt of Torrio who after the divorce married a young actress and singer These aspects are not in the TV series. He also disagreed with Torrio over the expansion into alcohol. In real life and in the TV series he is assassinated in his restaurant. His killer was never brought to justice.

Two gangs dominated Chicago in the 1920’s and the turf and activity war led to the downfall of Torrio who survived a major assassination attempt. He was watched over by Capone before going to prison when he recovered for Prohibition violations. He returned and went with his family back to Italy. The Turf War led to Capone’s St Valentine’s Day attempt to eliminate the opposition. Torrio returned to the USA to give evidence at the trial of Al Capone. He is featured in various Capone films and the Untouchables.

In the second episode, The Ivory Tower, reporters approach Torrio and Capone at the funeral of Colosimo asking if they are responsible for his death.

A man called George Baxter, I am not yet sure who he is, introduces Nucky to his teenage “clippie friend who so far has not yielded to his sexual advances. Nucky tells her she should enter the beauty competition and her companion is one of he judges. I assume to show another aspect of Nucky’s role as a Godfather

After the raid on the Funeral home Mucky tells the owner manager he is it of business and replaces him with Chalky White, the black criminal boss.

With his share of the proceeds from the sale of the alcohol, after giving Capone and Nucky a share he buys his wife a 100 dollar bracelet, his son toys and provides the family a belated lit Christmas tree. He then give his mother, a show girl (I thought she was his mistress at first!!!!) a necklace similar to one she sold to help bring him up. Nucky tells him that if he is to be his own master gangster he has also to pay him tribute of $3000. He has this amount left less 500 which he tries to borrow from Capone who secretly laughs at him. He then steals back the necklace to meet the debt.

In New York Luck Luciano brings another gangster Frankie Yale to see Rothstein who is convinced that Yale was responsible for the assassination of Colosimo. The fat man and young girl are on the way home when they find one of the Rothstein’s men still alive. The FBI man goes to see the Irish widow with two sons to say that he does not believe her husband was involved in the killing of Rothstein’s men. He was a patsy.