Crime, Italian Style

When Americans finally get to dive into the acclaimed Italian television series Gomorrah — premiering August 24 on SundanceTV — they will watch it the way most Italians do: relying on subtitles to decipher the Neapolitan dialect spoken by the characters.

“Ninety percent of Italians have to watch it with subtitles,” says Gina Gardini, a producer of what has become Italy’s most popular TV series of all time. Loosely adapted from the bestselling non-fiction book, Gomorrah, by Roberto Saviano, it provides viewers a rare window into the secretive workings of the Camorra Mafia, a powerful and ferocious crime network based in Naples.

For two seasons (a third and fourth are in the works), the series has riveted Italians with its brutal and unadulterated portrayal of the Camorra, which is actually a loose-knit web of competing criminal groups. “They are like mini states,” Gardini says.

Routinely compared to HBO’s The Wire for its gritty look and preference for lesser-known, naturalistic character actors, Gomorrah also draws com- parisons with HBO’s The Sopranos for how it highlights a particular Mafia clan led by a godfather-like commander, Don Pietro Savastano.

Like Tony Soprano, Don Pietro (played by the Neapolitan actor Fortunato Cerlino) demonstrates strong ties to his family, which includes his bored but calculating wife, Imma (Maria Pia Calzone), and his ineffectual son, Genny (Salva- tore Esposito). All the while, he orchestrates a colorful assemblage of henchmen to carry out his dirty work. They include a loyal, enigmatic right-hand man, Ciro Di Marzio (Marco D’Amore).

Alliances, however, can and do shift in this feud-prone society. “There are no heroes,” Gardini says.

Before a single scene was shot, the production team (including executive producer Matteo De Laurentiis and Gardini’s fellow producers, Riccardo Tozzi, Giovanni Stabilini and Marco Chimenz) spent three years laying groundwork, researching the background and ways of the Camorra.

They interviewed reporters and judges and read thousands of pages of wiretapped conversations. They developed plots drawn from the Camorra’s  historical criminal activities — drug trafficking, illegal toxic waste disposal and  bloody turf wars — and fashioned compilation characters from real people operating in the shadows.

“Everything that we do is based on or inspired from real events,” Gardini says. “We delve very deeply into this microcosm that few know about.”

They also shot in dicey locations. Recognizable in many scenes is Vele di Scampia, an immense concrete housing project in suburban Naples. Intended as a forward-thinking, low-cost housing solution, it instead turned into what is widely considered a ghetto, rife with crime.

During season one, Gardini says, “a lot of people didn’t want us to be there or to make the series.” (After his book came out, Saviano received death threats and spent years under police protection.)

But with the show’s tremendous success, many of those same Neapolitans began showing their pride. “Season two was different,” Gardini reports. Word would get out as to where they would be shooting, and locals would show up at the locations to watch and cheer on cast and crew.

Sometimes, she says, “it was like we were at a rock concert with 500 to 600 screaming fans.”