It’s hard to make the next “Sopranos” without trying too hard, and the new series “Sons of Anarchy” (9 p.m., FX) tries very hard all the time.

Set in a Northern California biker gang, the drama asks viewers to sympathize with a bunch of gun-running killers who battle rival Mexican biker gangs and skinhead meth dealers.

It’s a grim business in a blighted countryside undertaken by unappealing characters.

Ron Perlman (“Hellboy”) stars as Clay Morrow, the leader and co-founder of the Sons of Anarchy gang. He’s married to Genna (Katey Sagal), the widow of another biker pioneer. Her son, Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), is the troubled heir apparent to the crime family. He’s disturbed and distracted by the birth of a severely damaged baby after his junkie ex-wife (Drea de Matteo, “The Sopranos”) goes on a drug bender.

Jax has also been reading his father’s old journals and is struck by the dead man’s original vision for the gang as a kind of “Harley Commune.” He worries that the Sons have lost their way.

It’s not hard to see how the gangster drama evolved from the old Westerns. Both emphasize action and gunplay by men who followed particular codes of conduct while shooting down their rivals.

With its biker setting and outlaw California setting, “Sons” half returns the genre to its Western roots.

But visually, it’s pure gangster. The Sons hold informal business meetings that would not be out of place at the Bada-Bing. Clay leaves a calling card with a machine gun spray just like Al Pacino’s Tony Montana and Edward G. Robinson’s Little Caesar. A montage of carnage and emotional resolutions unfolds under a rock score, as in “Goodfellas” and every other shoot-’em-up made over the last two decades.

Beneath this violent surface lurks a generational struggle straight out of Shakespeare. Jax struggles Hamlet-like to determine his fate and direction, torn between his allegiance to his real father and his fidelity to Clay and Genna. But Genna is no meek Mrs. Hamlet – she’s more like Lady Macbeth, and Sagal’s portrayal of a monstrous, scheming female bully is often the best thing about this crowded drama. Genna wants Jax to stay on the dark side, and she’s capable of treacherous acts to keep him there.

¢ When we talk of drugs in this country, we often revert to the “just say no” mentality, as if drug use were merely a personal choice, without consequences for others.

“Cocaine Diaries: Alex James in Columbia” (8 p.m., BBC America) follows the bass player for the British band Blur on a cautionary travelogue.

A former addict, James once bragged that he spent a million dollars per year on his cocaine habit. The president of Columbia invited James to visit his country and to ride with a former drug kingpin’s assassin deep into the heart of the cocaine trade to see the gruesome toll it has taken on the people who have become collateral damage in the drug trade.

Says James, “It’s a long way from a cheeky line at a dinner party. It’s terrifying.”

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Coverage of the Republican National Convention (5 p.m., CNN; 6 p.m., MSNBC; 7 p.m., PBS; 8:45 p.m., Fox News; 9 p.m., ABC, CBS, NBC) continues.

¢ Speaking engagements bring Brennan and Booth to London, but a crime extends their stay on the fourth season premiere of “Bones” (7 p.m., Fox).