Gomorrah (TV series)

Gomorra
Genre	Crime drama
Created by	Roberto Saviano[1]
Based on	Gomorrah
Directed by	Stefano Sollima[1]
Starring	Marco D'Amore Fortunato Cerlino Salvatore Esposito Maria Pia Calzone Marco Palvetti
Composer(s)	Mokadelic
Country of origin	Italy
Original language(s)	Neapolitan, Italian
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	24
Production
Location(s)	Naples
Running time	~50 minutes
Release
Original network	Sky Italia
Original release	May 6, 2014 (2014-05-06) – present
External links
Official website

Gomorrah is a 2014 Italian television crime drama series. It is based on the book Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano^[2]

Gomorrah is set in the suburbs of Naples, focusing on organised crime and the relationships of gangsters, drug dealers, and ordinary people. It offers a different style of mafia portrayal from previous series such as The Sopranos, or other Italian series like Il Capo dei Capi. Gomorrah is similar to The Wire in showing street-level crime and its hierarchical organisation from the pavement up to the office chair, and giving an audience a story about external and internal power struggles between criminals and delinquents. Described as "ugly in a good way,"^[3] the series is fast-paced, concentrating on cold emotive content for dramatic effect.

Starting from 6 May 2014, Gomorrah ran on Sky Italia with approximately 1.2 million viewers per episode.^[4] Beta Film sold the rights to screen the series in more than 130 countries.^[5] Season 1 premiered in the US on SundanceTV on August 24, 2016.^[6]

Season 2 premiered on 10 May 2016.^[7]

The first season of Gomorrah received generally favorable reviews from critics, with a Metacritic rating of 76 out of 100 based on 15 reviews.^[8]

Season 1

The Camorra clan Savastano is under the control of Don Pietro Savastano, one of the most feared and respected mob bosses in the region. At Don Pietro's side are many trustworthy men, one of which is Ciro Di Marzio, nicknamed "The Immortal" due to his uncanny ability to survive deadly situations. At the beginning of the series Ciro is ordered to set fire to the house of a rival mob boss's mother, Salvatore Conte, who is encroaching on Pietro's territory, launching a brief but bloody war that forces Conte's relocation to Spain. Pietro then entrusts Ciro with the task of preparing his immature son Genny for the future role of becoming the boss of the family. Genny becomes involved in a motorcycle accident, and when hearing this news Pietro races to the hospital but is arrested and imprisoned after a police search uncovering drugs in his jacket and thousands of euros in the car.

Control of the clan passes to Imma, the wife of Pietro, who distrusts Ciro's intentions and Genny's ability to manage the clan. Overriding the orders Don Pietro issues to her from prison, Imma sends Ciro to Spain to broker peace with the rival clan of Salvatore Conte, and Genny to Honduras to strike a deal with the narcotics traffickers and to make it known that he is the heir of Pietro. After a long period in Honduras, Genny returns to Naples a much more severe, aggressive and confident figure, ready to take his place in leadership. Breaking away from Ciro and surrounding himself with young companions, Genny puts in place a series of political moves that causes distrust among the older members of Pietro's clan, who still do not consider him fit to be boss.

Meanwhile, Ciro, feeling ignored and unvalued by Genny, conspires with some of his companions to secede from the Savastano clan. He organises a coup intended to change the balance of power within the clan and to break the truce that Ciro himself had made with Salvatore Conte during his trip to Spain. Tension rises between the younger members of the clan who are loyal to Genny, and the members of the older members of the clan loyal to the imprisoned Don Pietro, whose Article 41-bis prison regime conditions and deteriorating mental health now prevent him relaying orders. Imma finds out that Ciro is the one that has been sabotaging the clan and confronts him, but Ciro in turn has her assassinated. Genny finds Imma's evidence of Ciro's betrayal, revealing his role in killing Imma. Not knowing who to trust, he mobilises his men for the mass elimination of suspected traitors on the day of his mother's funeral. Many of the old members loyal to Don Pietro die, with only Ciro and Malammore escaping the ambush.

After the massacre, Genny, fearing retaliation from the remaining members of the old clan, takes refuge in a bunker in the apartment complex of Vele di Scampia. Genny places a bounty of €150,000 on Ciro, leading to a tip that his betrayer will be attending a children's recital where his daughter is performing, Genny sends all of his men to kill him, but they are intercepted and brutally massacred by Salvatore Conte's clan. Genny arrives separately at the recital, when Ciro and Genny make eye contact Ciro immediately shoots him and Genny collapses to the ground. Amidst a panicked theatre, Ciro immediately takes his wife and daughter outside. Ciro's wife is furious and upset to realise that Ciro used them as bait for Genny, and leaves with their daughter. In the finale, Don Pietro is being relocated to a different prison in an armoured police van, when it suddenly is ambushed by masked men with automatic weapons. After the guards are killed, the gunmen are revealed to be surviving members of Don Pietro's faction, led by Malammore, that have orchestrated his escape. In the very final scene Genny, who is seriously injured, while lying on the floor of the theatre, moves his finger slightly, still alive.

Season 2

Directly after the events of the previous season, Ciro successfully organises the opponents of the decimated Savastanos into a co-operative alliance of smaller clans, headed each by Ciro, his friend and co-conspirator Rosario, Don Salvatore Conte, and ex-Savastano underlings Donna Annalisa and Gypsy. However, Ciro's attempts to reconcile with his wife Debora go astray, as she becomes increasingly distrustful of Ciro and paranoid over their daughter's safety from Ciro's surviving enemies. A late-night argument on a beach erupts into violence when Ciro impulsively strangles Debora to death, and with Rosario's assistance he frames the death as a gangland murder, but is left emotionally reeling from his own actions.

Resuming one year later, Don Pietro has gone into hiding in Germany. Meanwhile his son Genny has awoken from his coma and fled Naples separately, independently developing a cocaine trafficking connection between his old contacts in Honduras and a wealthy Roman buyer, whose daughter Azzurra he takes as a girlfriend. The first reunion between father and son falters, as the Cologne-based 'Ndrangheta cell Don Pietro has tapped to sell him heavy weapons is wiped out by their superiors, with only Genny's efforts sparing Pietro from the ambush; nevertheless, Pietro spurns his son's assistance and returns to Italy without him, still resenting Genny's failure as boss.

Ciro persuades Salvatore Conte's disaffected lieutenants, Prince and Mulatto, to help orchestrate their domineering boss's assassination and establish their own regimes within the alliance. In the wake of Conte's death, however, Don Pietro covertly reenters Naples and recruits Malammore's headstrong niece Patrizia to act as go-between from his hiding place. His first plot is to have Donna Annalisa repeatedly targeted by armed robbers to provoke her into violent retaliation, but Ciro and Prince successfully intervene to spare the life of a captured gunman who gives up Pietro's role as instigator.

Ciro defies Pietro's plans by reaching out to him with a peace offering, arranging for a heavily guarded summit in Trieste between himself and Genny as proxy. Through Patrizia, Pietro relays instructions to Genny to assassinate Ciro in his hotel room, but at the last moment Genny spares his nemesis rather than upset his own position in Rome. The next day the two establish terms of peace: in exchange for Genny becoming cocaine supplier to Ciro's alliance, Don Pietro and his men are permitted to operate, provided they never leave their existing territory.

Don Pietro is furious at his son's concessions, but with Patrizia's counsel eventually agrees to tentatively trust in the peace as part of Genny's unrevealed longer-term plan, involving a secret deal to supply his friend Prince, already the alliance's most successful dealer, with cheap cocaine until he is positioned to totally supplant their competitors. The Don's patience with his son soon evaporates when violence re-erupts between Pietro's loyalists and the "alley boys", former friends of Genny's who defect to Ciro's alliance rather than reenter the fold. A rift also develops in the alliance as Rosario is caught threatening the well-respected Prince, and Pietro seizes the opportunity to foment further breakdown by luring Prince out to a secluded spot and killing him, refusing to favour Genny's plot over his own. Ciro forces the suspect Rosario out of town while he identifies Prince's murderer, successfully uncovering the schemes of both Savastanos, but not before unidentified gunmen track Rosario down and shoot him dead.

Further seasons

During a press conference held on May 9th 2016, the producer confirmed 2 more seasons are in the works, and the third season is almost ready.^[9]

Crew

• Directors: Stefano Sollima, Francesca Comencini, Claudio Cupellini
• Photography: Paolo Carnera, Michele D'Attanasio
• Editing: Patrizio Marone
• Music: Mokadelic
• Cinematography: Paki Meduri
• Production: Sky, Fandango, Cattleya, LA7, Beta Film

Cast

• Fortunato Cerlino as Pietro Savastano, the head of the Savastano clan.
• Salvatore Esposito as Gennaro "Genny" Savastano, the son of the boss, manipulated by Ciro. He wants to take his father's place, but is not up to the role.
• Marco D'Amore as Ciro Di Marzio, aka "The Immortal", the young and emerging gang boss's favorite. He is a friend and right-hand man of Genny.
• Maria Pia Calzone as Immacolata "Imma" Savastano, Pietro's wife, who intends to succeed her husband, not considering her son ready for the role.
• Fabio De Caro as Malammore, an old member of the Savastano clan, one of the men closest to Don Pietro.
• Massimiliano Rossi as Zecchinetta, an old member of the Savastano clan
• Gaetano Di Vaio as Little Baron, the Savastano clan's drug lieutenant
• Marco Palvetti as Salvatore Conte, leader of a rival clan to the Savastanos
• Ivan Boragine as Michele Casillo, new mayor of Giugliano in Campania
• Elena Starace as Noemi, girlfriend of Genny in season 1.
• Alessio Gallo as Tonino "Spiderman", a young member of the Savastano clan.
• Carmine Monaco as "Track", a young member of the Savastano clan.
• Emanuele Vicorito as "Pop", a young member of the Savastano clan.
• Vincenzo Sacchettino as Daniele, a sixteen-year-old boy recruited by Ciro Di Marzio.
• Walter Lippa as Fishmonger, an old member of the Savastano clan.
• Antonio Milo as Attilio, an old member of the Savastano clan and a close friend of Ciro, who considers him almost as a father.
• Cristiana Dell'Anna as Patrizia, Malammore's eldest niece and assistant to Don Pietro. This character features in season 2.
• Cristina Donadio as Donna Annalisa aka "Scianel", drug dealer and female boss. This character features in season 2.

References

External links

• Official website (Italian)
• Official website (American)
• Gomorrah at the Internet Movie Database