The recently-concluded five-season mafia epic «Gomorrah» on HBO Max is one of the best-ever examples of the genre on TV.
Though this year marks the 50th anniversary of the first installment in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic mob trilogy The Godfather — which also came back for a limited theatrical release on February 25 — I find myself still reeling from (and, okay, telling everyone I know about) the fifth and final season of Gomorrah, which is streaming exclusively on HBO Max. It’s only been out for a little over a month now on the service. But it gave viewers a brutal, bloody, and satisfying conclusion to the five-season story arc set in the crime-ridden slums of Naples. Which, by the way, also produced one of the most visceral, Shakespearean mafia dramas of all time. Maybe even the best. Sorry, Godfather fans. Thanks in part to actor Salvatore Esposito’s portrayal of Savastano — a crime boss with a menacing scar on one cheek who broods, dotes on his wife and son, and who shoots to kill without so much as blinking — I’ve found myself unable to so easily let this series go, never mind its well-executed conclusion. For me, in fact, there will always only be one godfather. And it’s not the Hollywood version. It’s this one, the hulking, bearded figure who grew up in the decaying northern Naples municipality of Secondigliano. In Gomorrah, the gangs speak with the Neapolitan dialect, and live by the code of “il Sistema” (The System). Rival clans of the Camorra, the Italian criminal organization upon which the name of this show is based, jockey for power, spill blood, corrupt and corrupt absolutely, and fight a forever war. One where the battlefield is demarcated by city streets and ugly apartment blocks, the sound of automatic gunfire and bloody turf wars at night that are as commonplace as children playing in the street. So much of this show, in fact, isn’t written so much as acted. And when we see the players wordlessly selling drugs from protected corners, hiding weapons, setting traps for rivals, taking refuge in pre-provisioned safehouses, it all hints at a universe of corruption and malevolence that, I’m sorry — guys who say things like “Leave the gun, take the cannoli” or whine that “You don’t even think to call me Godfather” have almost nothing in common with.
