Ever wondered how Tony Soprano would’ve turned out if he’d been fed boiled bacon and cabbage as a kid rather than baked ziti?
Well, the answer to that conundrum is supplied by The Brotherhood, a $20 million series set in Providence, which centres around an Irish-American Murphia family by the name of Caffee (no, we’ve never met anybody called that either).
“The first episode’s opening image is a model of cheap meaning – the American flag flies over a ramshackle construction site, the image suggesting a devastated battlefield,” writes the man from The Washington Post. “Before long, the expletives are flying through the air, a viciously corrupt union boss is warning that he’d better get his ‘taste’ of spoils from a building project. And then, the show barely 10 minutes over, someone gets his head bashed in with a shovel while another man exclaims admiringly, ‘Wow!’
“Only a few seconds later, a man’s leg is crushed by more thugs and a woman’s earring is yanked out, leaving her earlobe a shredded bloody mess. Eventually she’ll receive new earrings in a box ­– a box that also contains someone’s severed ear.”
Quality stuff! While the spoilsports at the Showtime Network won’t allow anybody foreign on to their site – boo! – one of the stars, Jason Isaacs, maintains his own page, which gives you all the background.
Talking of expletives, Caught In The Net was disappointed that there was absolutely no use of the f-, c- and w- words last week when we tuned into ex-Pistol Steve Jones on Los Angeles’ Indie 103.1.
Trumpeted by Rolling Stone as “America’s coolest radio station”, their other rude rockers turned DJs are Henry Rollins, Rob Zombie and the lovely Suicide Girls.
Despite the disappointing lack of profanity, Jonesy is a radio natural who’s managed to lure everyone from Robert Plant and Juliette Lewis to Courtney Love and Thurston Moore into the studio recently.
You can tune in to the station’s live stream at indie1031.com.
Also on the CIN recommended listening list is Radio Resonance, a willfully uncommercial London station that includes Father Ted creator Arthur Mathews among its most vociferous champions.
Schedule highlights include the Occult Talk Show, teenage affairs magazine Pube Essence, Rock & Roll Fishing, and the seriously strange Cyber Chutney Arse Ducks.
You can cop an earful at www.resonancefm.com
CIN is delighted to say “welcome back” to Jarvis Cocker whose www.myspace.com/jarvspace page boasts a brand new track, ‘Running The World’, that unlike Steve Jones says “cunt” rather a lot.
The multiple cunts in question are the G12 leaders who, a year on, haven’t coughed up the ackers they promised Sir Bob.
Which just leaves time for these visits: the world turns emo; minus-tolerance; and a cracking James Earl Jones mash-up.