Boxing Clever: Why every great show could do with a bit of Gabriel Byrne

— but I couldn’t hack all that death in The Serpent but my wife is thoroughly enjoying it, which makes me feel left out

Gabriel Byrne in ZeroZeroZero

ZeroZeroZero (Sky Atlantic, Thursday 9pm and Now TV) came with almost too much hype. First of all it’s based on a novel by Roberto Saviano, the journalist whose factual work on the mafia in Naples inspired the Italian crime series Gomorrah . I don’t know about you, but I reckon it’s the best TV show ever made.

Add in that ZeroZeroZero shares directors with both Gomorrah and True Detective and I was waiting for the first episode to blow me off the couch. It didn’t, and not just because I’m eating two Creme Eggs a night. The show follows a drug deal between Mexican dealers and Italian mob buyers and it all felt a bit obvious at the start. The Italians were all gorgeous suits and religious festivals and feeding their rivals to the pigs; the Mexicans were brutal and suave and corrupt, and that was just the cops. It felt like I was watching The Godfather and Narcos , side-by-side on a split screen, as the story veered between Italy and Mexico. They should have called it Deja Vu 2.

And then Gabriel Byrne stepped in to save the day. Actually, we hear his unmistakable voice at the very start and get to see him fall to the ground in a hail of bullets and glass. But it’s later, when he emerges into the picture as the broker between the two sides that we get to see why every great show could do with a bit of Gabriel Byrne. What he brings to ZeroZeroZero is a spot of ‘yerra lads it will be grand’ Irishness. The others are all very serious and well-dressed — Byrne’s character Edward Lynwood is shabby and optimistic. It makes for a nice bit of drama when the whole deal comes crashing down. The others, the grumpy Mexicans and Italians, they sensed that this could go badly wrong. But Byrne’s Lynwood seems a bit surprised because he thought he would end up grand.

T he pace picks up at this point of the first episode and the full scale of what’s going on reveals itself. It didn’t leave me with a daft yearning to watch episode there and then, the way I felt after 1 hour of The Killing. But it’s building up nicely, it looks great thanks to the directors they used, and more than anything else, I want to see what happens to Gabriel Byrne’s character. This is going to be great.