"City of Men" pulses with the kind of energy you don't get often on American television, and the realness of the shot-on-location scene really makes each episode feel like a minimovie.

Those unfamiliar with the film may find some scenes--like when the actors break character to tell their real-life stories--a bit jarring. [7 Apr 2006, p.54]

It smoothly toggles between working as a crime melodrama and a coming-of-age tale, as a harrowing piece of social commentary and a gentle bit of farce.

Unlike anything else you've ever seen on TV.

The closest American popular television has ever come to this kind of close-up realism is probably the drug-dealing scenes in "The Wire" on HBO, and even they seem a little tame and stagey compared with what takes place in Dona Marta.

It's a work whose immense vitality and a persuasive naturalism overcome its occasional paroxysms of style or hammered-home points.

The humorous moments are all the more precious because life is so tough in this engrossing series.