There’s a cheekiness, freshness and tenderness to this show that sets it apart from standard crime dramas. It’s so wonderfully rich that the Godfather cast wouldn’t be out of place. It is worth it just for the leather.
The prequel to formidable Neapolitan mobster saga Gomorrah throws viewers into the filthy bustle of Secondigliano, a broken quarter of northern Naples that, in 1977, has been abandoned by God and government, leaving organised crime as the only alternative to destitution. Even in this purgatory, though, the city’s style and the late 70s endure: the young men of Secondigliano may not be able to escape their fate, but they will look fantastic trying.
Angelo (Francesco Pellegrino) sashes forcefully through the crowd with messianic collar-length curls, eyes that seem to mascara themselves and a collection of spectacular leather jackets. Children gather to stare when his car skids to a dusty halt and Angelo, with chest hair and a medallion nestled in the open collar of a patterned silk shirt in two exquisite shades of brown, emerges and strides off to his next appointment.
Angelo is in his early 20s and is the hippest gangster in his neighbourhood.
Yet he bears the pained intensity of the thwarted: on a citywide level he has no sway, and he has worked out that the cut of the action the big bosses give him is a paltry percentage of the overall pie. His crew, sporting their own leather outerwear in boxy mustard or calf-length burgundy, are content enough, but Angelo wants more.
Watching from a distance is a boy even further down the food chain. Pietro (Luca Lubrano) is in his mid-teens, with a greasy parting and bumfluff. Every day he wears the same jumbo corduroy coat, which looks sad beside Angelo’s sharp clobber while still being, in our eyes, pretty cool.
Pietro has nothing but his wits, yet his desire to improve himself makes him the natural leader of his cheerful gang of petty-thieving urchins, and if he can prove his worth to Angelo, his ascent can begin. His surname is Savastano … Gomorrah fans know that, in 30 years’ time, Pietro Savastano will be a king.
The dashing Angelo and determined Pietro soon become colleagues, first when Angelo’s team are ambushed on their own turf while keeping cash on the premises overnight. Evidently there is a rat in the operation who must be found and mercilessly dealt with, a classic mafia tale told here with mournful elegance, as the rain pours down and Pietro’s eyes open.
Not for the last time, we attend a lavish funeral where everyone present knows that the murderer is among them and that the deceased had it coming.
The two new allies grow closer as Angelo, desperate to mix with the older, all-powerful dons — majestic double-breasted suits; impossibly large, square, tinted spectacles — becomes embroiled in a drugs operation that pits family against family and young against old. There is always a boyish, even vaguely Bugsy Malone cheekiness offsetting the seriousness of the business being conducted, for instance when Angelo and Pietro pull off a dock heist by distracting security guards using a football and 22 10-year-olds.
But Gomorrah: The Origins is respectful of its characters’ predicament. The word “freedom” keeps popping up in the dialogue, forever promised to foot soldiers in return for their loyalty, but never actually given to anyone except the men at the top. Angelo and Pietro’s difficult backgrounds mean their chances of success are small: we see how impoverished Pietro is, while Angelo’s troubled youth is summed up by a recollection from his uncle, who does not have many lines but does utter this corker:
“You know what your mum did after she shot your dad’s killer? She came home to breastfeed you!”
As he plots his way into the mob, Pietro meets a girl, Imma (Tullia Venezia), who has a comfortable life in the nice apartment she shares with her loving parents. Imma tells Pietro about her dream of studying music at Juilliard; Pietro goes quiet when he is asked what his dream is, since poor boys like him aren’t allowed them.
Again, Gomorrah fans know how that story turns out, and it starts with Imma realising that organised crime’s tentacles touch her family too, which means she is not free either.
With children and young adults as its protagonists, Gomorrah: The Origins may not have the heft of other premium gangster stories, but although it delivers familiar, wonderfully rich mob-drama set pieces — at a fabulous garden party where the various families meet, eat and furiously scheme against each other, you half-expect a young Al Pacino to walk into shot — its youthful main characters lend it a freshness and tenderness that standard crime sagas lack. Dust off your wildest vintage fabrics and hit the streets.
