Dialled up to 11, Sly shows he's still king

The last of the action heroes succumbs to the lure of streaming. Just don’t expect The Sopranos, says Hamish McBain

REMEMBER Netflix’s first ever original show? From all the way back in 2012? It was called Lilyhammer and starred Steve Van Zandt as a New York gangster relocating to a small town. Van Zandt’s small town was in Norway rather than Oklahoma.

He had relocated because he’d turned informant, not because a new gen capo had banished him having finished 25 years in jail. Other than that, the inverse Midnight Cowboy premise of Tulsa King — put streetwise metropolitan outlaw in Nowheresville, allow culture clash hilarity to ensue — is pretty much the same, except on Paramount+.

Twenty-five years is a long time. Twenty-five years ago, had Sylvester Stallone’s agent uttered the words, “Hey, how about a TV series?” he probably would have got whacked. For ages now, of course, everybody has done TV.

Even Arnie signed up for a Netflix show two years ago, but then his two attempts to reboot his most famous franchise (The Terminator) for a new generation both flopped.

For Sly, however, both Creed films were roaring successes, to the extent that he bagged his second ever Oscar nomination for his reprise of Rocky.