PICK OF TODAY’S TV

TULSA KING, 10PM, CH5

SYLVESTER STALLONE takes on his first leading TV role as a New York Mafia hit man getting out of prison to find his ‘family’ have sent him to what feels like the middle of nowhere: Tulsa, Oklahoma, the one-time ‘oil capital of the world’. Dwight Manfredi (Stallone, pictured) is tasked with establishing a base for the east coast mob, and finds that during his 25 years inside, things have changed. A lot. Sensing that his criminal overlords may not have his best interests in mind, Dwight sets about assembling his own crew — a ragtag bunch including a retired rodeo rider, a cabbie turned chauffeur and the proprietor of a medicinal marijuana dispensary — and also has to deal with the attentions of a federal agent and the resentment of his estranged daughter. There’s humour in the script, but this is not a comedy — Allen Coulter, who directs this first episode, cut his teeth on The Sopranos. Stallone is 76, so it’s impressive that all this feels plausible — if you like what you see, the full series is available on Paramount+, and there’s more Stallone at 10.55pm in the latest, fifth instalment in the Rambo franchise, Last Blood. He first blew up the screen as Vietnam veteran John Rambo in 1982 and here, he’s setting traps and unleashing his lethal combat training on the nasty villains who kidnapped a friend’s granddaughter in Mexico.