Mob Wives

Thanks to its camera-ready cast of extraordinarily real women, Mob Wives' version is no less affecting. As for those other real housewives franchises, their endless squabbles and social climbing antics are rendered rather trivial after you watch the first five minutes of Mob Wives. The real action, it turns out, is on Staten Island.

The show is sloppy, vulgar fun, even if it's hard to detect much likability under the layers of lacquer. [9 May 2011, p.43]

Mostly, though, Mob Wives arrives too late on familiar turf to be truly interesting, and even with ample doses of bleeped expletives that almost outnumber the audible words, free-flowing tears and (yes) a hair-pulling fight in the "This season on" tease, the situations come off as staged and contrived.

They're profane, contentious and come off hard as nails, given to saying things like if a man is good to his family, his crimes are not that important. For most viewers, it's a glimpse into another world--a world where a glimpse is enough.