Critic Reviews

The legacy of the fourth season will be the extreme artistic courage it took to undo the spell of the Ciro-Genny pairing, and the facility with which they navigated the brave new world in its absence. That’s the sign of a show with true vision, and it opens up every possibility.

There's no romance of evil here, only soul-killing despair, yet you find yourself deeply invested in Ciro's survival and wishing for a glimmer of hope in a world devoid of it. [19/26 Aug 2016 p.100]

A series that forces you to accept the dark reality of these real-life figures, rather than forgive their choices as those required of a life distanced from our own.

Gomorrah is dark--both in tone and how it was shot--and it requires concentration on the subtitles, but it's also completely riveting and worth the effort as Italy steps up, via Sundance TV, to prove we don't have a lock on quality dramas.

From one episode to the next, it’s always a bit of a surprise which character will become the story’s central figure, the writers seemingly able to make any of its dramatic players utterly gripping.

In many respects, the twisted moral compass at play in Saviano’s story embodies a modern take on a society that is overrun by corruption and darkness. Gomorrah‘s vision of such a world is both compelling and horrifying, and audiences will likely be unable to look away.

It doesn’t have the emotional or stylistic highs of those predecessors [“The Sopranos” and “The Godfather”], but it carries you along like one of the sleek Italian motorcycles preferred by its wealthier characters.

If Gomorrah has a flaw, it’s that the contours of the story feel distinctly familiar, even if the criminals, housing projects, and slick lawyers have unfamiliar names. ... Even so, the rich texture of the color-saturated world created by writer Stefano Bises and directors Stefano Sollima, Francesca Comencini, and Claudio Cupellini is easy to admire. We’ve been here before, but these tour guides have fresh intelligence.

[the] combination of well-worn mobster cliches and Naples’s haunting otherness makes for a unique thriller. That remains the case in season five even as the pedal-to-the-floor pace leaves little room for admiring the baroque scenery.

Atmospheric, showing a side of Italy no travelogue would touch, Gomorrah is also fast-paced, covering so much ground in two episodes provided for preview that most series would already be over.