The Black Donnellys

The series follows four young Roman Catholic Irish-American brothers in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood and their involvement with petty and organized crime, specifically the Irish Mob. Set in the present day, the show draws heavily upon Irish-American history and themes of family and loyalty. The pilot episode illustrates a clear tension and rivalry between Irish and Italians. The episodes are narrated by a childhood friend, Joey "Ice Cream", whom the show depicts as an unreliable narrator.

In creating the show, Haggis, a native of London, Ontario, strongly referenced his hometown's local history about the real-life Black Donnellys and the massacre associated with their name. In the pilot episode, Joey says the neighborhood is populated primarily by "Black Irish", whom he calls "a race of dark-haired people" the Celts had failed to wipe out in Ireland. The series portrays Hell's Kitchen as a traditionally working-class neighborhood with a deeply entrenched ethnic Irish population and an Irish Mob with control over illegal gambling and loansharking, and heavy involvement in the unions.

On April 9, 2007, the show was pulled from NBC’s primetime line-up. On April 14, the series was officially cancelled, but the remainder of the episodes were made available on the NBC website and on iTunes. On June 5, 2007, it was announced that HDNet had acquired the rights from NBC Universal to broadcast all 13 episodes of the series, beginning June 13, 2007. A DVD collection entitled "The Black Donnellys: The Complete Series" was released on September 4, 2007.