Get mobbed-up with Gomorrah’s season premiere and a new Gambino family documentary
Or check out Peacemaker for a mass-murderer with more of a sense of humor
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, January 27. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Gomorrah (HBO Max, 3 a.m.): It’s the premiere of the fifth and final season of this Italian crime drama series about the Camorra crime families of Naples (based on the acclaimed 2009 film of the same name and examining the real-life infamous Italian organized crime syndicate). And the Camorra being what it is (think those Italian mobsters looking down their noses at the visiting Tony Soprano and crew), the series’ extensive cast should essentially be largely covered with big red X’s by this point, leaving only a select few of the show’s Savastano crime family still among the living. In this American TV premiere, a major character gets whacked (in the parlance of Mob shows everywhere), but not before revealing that another major character thought long dead is actually still out there, plotting some serious Neapolitan vengeance.
Regular coverage
And Just Like That… (HBO Max, 3 a.m.)
Peacemaker (HBO Max, 3 a.m.)
Wild card
Truth And Lies: The Last Gangster (ABC, 8 p.m.): Since we’re all mobbed-up for the night, ABC is bringing us this two-hour documentary special about America’s own infamous crime family, those murderous Gambinos. With its centerpiece being a new interview from former Gambino family hitman, convinced murderer, and guy somehow still breathing, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, the documentary promises the Mob-hungry masses a whole lot of revealed Mafia secrets and rites. (And the lowdown on that whole “murder literally anybody who gets in the way of making money” aspect of Mob life.)
Gravano, who’s been played on screens both large and small by everyone from William Forysthe, to Nicholas Turturro, to William DeMeo in that universally ridiculed John Travolta John Gotti movie from 2018, is now a 76-year-old private citizen, which, again, speaks to how these Mafia movies are a bit of a hype. Same goes for a lot of Gravano’s former mobster colleagues interviewed for this documentary, many of whom, like Gravano, have set up a cottage industry posting YouTube videos where they critique Hollywood Mob movies for their accuracy.