I currently watch four TV shows semi-regularly… Scrubs, My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, and 24.  I try really hard not to get sucked in to watching other shows, because for the most part TV is a waste of time.  I do occasionally also watch CNBC and random news.  But last Monday I caught the premier of The Black Donnellys.  And last night I watched episode 2.  And tonight, episode 3 (online)… I’m hooked.

If you like The Sopranos, you’ve gotta check out The Black Donnellys… episode 1, episode 2, episode 3 (NBC puts each week’s show online a week early).

It is about four Irish brothers, probably in their 20s, who live in a rough New York neighborhood.  The storyline so far appears to be about how they will eventually become mobsters, starting in episode 1 with a chain of events that ended with them killing all of their neighborhood’s Italian mobsters.  Kind of similar to the storyline in Godfather 2, but set in present day and with an Irish twist.  You can tell NBC is setting this show up to fill the mobster-show void that The Sopranos will leave behind when the last episode airs on HBO this summer.

This show really feels like another great HBO drama, but it’s not.  It is an NBC network show.  It is already very dramatic and it gives us the violence that was desperately lacking from most Sopranos episodes.  But it took me until the end of the second episode to realize that there wasn’t any cursing in The Black Donnellys.  The story is just that good and doesn’t need it.

It airs Mondays on NBC from 10pm to 11pm Eastern.