Why you should be watching Sons of Anarchy

You need ANOTHER reason to watch?

The fact that 5 USA is currently trailing the new series of Sons of Anarchy - leading me to believe it will be aired imminently, after months of speculation - makes me very happy indeed. (The fact that they trail it during Justified - thereby giving me a double whammy of hotness - Jax and Raylan! - makes me very, very happy, but isn’t the point of this post). It's a show that I have been plugging for a while now - but am still finding it a hard sell. So here, once again, is why you should be watching Sons of Anarchy.



It's not just about bikes: OK, for many of my friends the fact that this is a show about sweaty, hairy bikers is one of its major selling points, but I also know that for many people, it seems off-putting. Who wants to watch a macho bullshit show about a load of second rate Hells Angels? It's an easy misconception, but one that even a cursory watching of the show will dispel: while faithfully representing life in a motorcycle club (they don’t like the word gang, and are you going argue with them?), it is really about community, family, small town life and the pressures of change. Not for nothing has it been described as "the Sopranos on two wheels" or "Hamlet in black leather".

It has great female characters: while, yes, there are the obligatory skanky, disposable women in tight tops denim cut offs littering the biker bars, Sons actually has some of the best and most fully rounded female characters on TV. Matriarch Gemma (played to Golden Globe winning effect by Katey Sagal, proving she is far more than a comic actress in a role written for her by her husband and show creator); Jax's doctor girlfriend, Tara Knowles (Mad Men's Maggie Siff), and Agent June Stahl (Ally Walker) are all strong, complex women making their way in a man's world. They are allowed their flaws, their strengths, their weaknesses. They are not token mothers or wives there to add a little eye candy amidst all the hardware. In fact…


The "objectification" tends to work only one way, and it's not the way you expect: I have lots of film theory friends who could express this better than I can, but one of the visually interesting things about the show is the fact that, when it comes to eye candy, it's the boys who provide it. Yes, there are plenty of scantily clad women littering the screen (whole chunks of season 2 were set around an 'adult' film set) but it's interesting that they tend to be not actually that attractive, at least by Hollywood standards, and that when it comes to doing a close up on hot bodies, it's the young male lead Jax the camera is in love with. If anyone's getting their kits off for the love scenes or finding the need to have a possibly gratuitous shower, it's him, not whoever he happens to be in bed with. Obviously, this could just be because Jax - played with a coiled, hurt fury by Charlie Hunnam, unrecognisable from his Queer As Folk days - is totally smoking hot, but I like to believe there's a more subtle undermining of cinematic conventions going on. Or maybe I just want to think that, to justify ogling Charlie Hunnam with his shirt off.


The acting is great: Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman, Katey Sagal, Maggie Siff, Ally Walker, Henry Rollins, Tommy Flanagan, Mitch Pileggi: the cast is a roll call of familiar faces and they are all acting at the top of their game. Henry Rollins' turn as a white supremacist in Season 2 was terrifying, and he's not alone...


The storytelling is utterly gripping: like the best dramas, Sons is morally complex - you are, after all, basically cheering for the bad guys - gripping, and at times heartbreaking, and never less than exceptionally well-written. Storylines often throw you: a fantastically well written rape storyline in season 2 played out in completely unexpected but utterly believable ways, while never diluting the horror of what had happened (I literally wept at several stages during the season) and it’s a show that grabs you, wrong foots you, and never lets you go. If you haven't seen the show, I'd recommend catching up with the boxed sets because there is a story arc, and season 2 ended on a killer cliff-hanger, but you can probably throw yourself into season 3 and catch up pretty quickly - but whatever you do, watch it.

Also, I mentioned Charlie Hunnam was hot, right?