Gomorrah, the Ducati of gangster sagas, ends its run on HBO Max

The New York Times

"Watching that much of the show in a relative rush — tantamount to a yearlong binge — hasn’t been ideal," says Mike Hale of the Italian import. "The show’s plotting, especially in the later seasons, has tended to be both melodramatic and mechanical. The ritualistic elements — stealing a drug shipment, fleeing a police raid, betrayal, assassination — began to repeat in lock step. The double crosses and morphing alliances were so hard to keep track of that the plot twists didn’t have the impact they should have, the sign of a soap opera that’s losing steam. The seemingly endless supply of new gangsters and drug gangs filled the story with anonymous, unengaging characters. But plot was never the main point of Gomorrah, a show that packages dime-novel emotions with such high Italian style that you bask in it rather than watch it. The meticulously thought-out costuming, the array of statement-making haircuts, the choreography of cars and motorcycles, the lambent nighttime cinematography, the Brutalist architecture of the Naples housing projects, make Gomorrah the Ducati of gangster sagas. The landscapes and the characters’ lives may be bleakly naturalistic, but the show runs on sleek sensation and pulp romanticism — a palpable, pervading melancholia." ALSO: Looking back at Gomorrah's convoluted seven-year journey.