The first season of Mobland began with Conrad, the patriarch of the Harrigan family, explaining to his childhood best friend, Archie Hammond, the difference between poaching and fishing. For a long time, that scene seemed like an unimportant throwaway, until episode 8 introduced a retired police officer, Colin Tattersall, who called himself a carp fisherman. Now, what separated Tattersall from other policemen was that he wasn’t a poacher. He was the one who set the bait and was willing to wait in the lashing. He called undercover police work a waiting game, but obviously DS Ivan Fisk and DC Yvonne Mukasa weren’t fishermen. They were moral policemen bound by the book, but Tattersall had a different philosophy altogether. He was willing to lose some to gain some.
Now, we can’t be sure if Tattersall was really in bed with Richie or if he was just serving his own interests by taking help from an enemy of the enemy, as they both wanted the same thing, that is, to get rid of Conrad and Maeve and, in turn, break the entire Harrigan family. By doing so, Tattersall would once again prove his expertise to the department and earn a few medals, maybe, while Richie would get his revenge on the Harrigans for killing his son and wife in cold blood. And the only difference between Ivan Fisk and Tattersall was that the latter was willing to bend the rules to get what he had come for. He knew that Conrad was too powerful to be charged with petty crimes or the murders of gangsters whose lives literally have no value in the eyes of the law. This was why he conspired with Richie and got Fisk and Mukasa murdered, pinning the blame on the Harrigans and giving the police department enough reasons to assemble an armed task force to arrest Maeve and Conrad from their palace.
Tattersall had done his fair share of research on the background of Alice, the undercover police officer Fisk had planted into the inner circle of Harrigan. Alice, real name Nicola, had previously taken a bribe to plant evidence in a high-profile murder case in June 2018, and then did the same thing in a 2021 case. Well, Tattersall dug up her background because he wanted her to do it again. He told her that it wasn’t the Harrigans who had Fisk and Mukasa killed, but it didn’t matter, as they would be taking the fall, given the police department had no other evidence against the mighty crime family. So Tattersall sweetly threatened Alice to go to the Harrigans’ house to steal DNA evidence of Maeve and Conrad moments before their arrest. Now, the ninth episode of Mobland didn’t reveal what Tattersall was planning to do with this evidence, but my best guess is that he’s going to extract the DNA from Maeve’s martini glass and Conrad’s cigar and plant it on the gun that Richie had used to shoot Fisk and Mukasa. Initially, I believed that Alice had come to the Harrigans’ house to plant the very same gun, but it didn’t look like that was the case. Then again, I could be wrong, because the scene was quite haphazard, and we weren’t shown what Alice was really doing after she left the dinner table. So if Tattersall can prove in court that Maeve and Conrad are cop killers, then these two will spend the rest of their lives in prison. However, Harry knew what Alice and her puppeteer were up to, so maybe he would come up with a plan to save the Harrigans from the law.
Furthermore, in episode 9, when Tattersall paid Richie a visit, the mobster asked him to get Maeve and Conrad into a cop shop or a London nick, making it easy for him and his men to finish them. But the question here is: is Tattersall really going to hand the Harrigans over to Richie so he can exact his revenge? Well, I am not quite sure, because from one perspective, Tattersall knows that Conrad is too powerful to be easily put behind bars, and there’s a possibility that his plan may backfire, thereby ruining his plan to break the crime families in London. I think one of the reasons why Tattersall joined hands with Richie was because he had no heir left to his throne, meaning his family line was already broken, so the Harrigans were Tattersall’s sole target. However, if Tattersall still has anything approaching a moral backbone, then maybe he won’t let Richie kill Maeve and Conrad. It could also be possible Tattersall’s playing both Richie and Conrad, and could be secretly working for Kat McAllister, to clear the field so Kat could establish a new empire and put her own pawns in the London mob circuit. Whatever the case might be, Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren are the stars of the show, and something tells me that writers aren’t just going to let them go so easily. The duo might be getting on a bit, but they still have a lot of spark left in them. It could be possible that Conrad knew that the cops would be knocking down his door sooner or later. He already suspected Alice of being a snitch, which means Conrad may have planned something to get himself out of such a mess. Or maybe it’s Harry, who, like always, is going to come to their rescue and stop Tattersall and Richie from realizing their treacherous plan. Well, let’s see how it all unveils in the finale of Mobland season 1. Also, if you have anything to add, feel free to drop your theory or thoughts in the comment section below.
