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

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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.