Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia is the rare Netflix series that would've benefited from more episodes

Slate

The three-part docuseries on how the feds took down the mob in the 1980s "brings a certain flair to the proceedings," says Sam Adams. "Every installment kicks off with the nervous trills of Baby Huey’s 'Hard Times,' which might make you wonder if you actually sat on the remote and accidentally switched to an episode of The Deuce. But that style comes at the expense of coherence and character. The series is edited with such impatience that it never lets a moment breathe or makes room for the details that might enliven this umpteenth telling of the tale. The interviews are so chopped that at times it sounds like every word was taken from a different sentence. It’s the rare Netflix series that could actually have benefited from stretching out over another hour or two. Paring the story down to its cops-and-mobsters essentials robs it of its soul. Although we hear participants on both sides talk about how miserable the mob made life for small-business owners, (director Sam) Hobkinson can’t seem to find one to testify in the first person, and when an FBI agent goes on about how mob influence corrupted labor unions, it’s only to point out how expensive that made it for businessmen who hired union labor and so had to negotiate with the Mafia. (It’s implied, but not stated outright, that (Donald) Trump must have been one of those businessmen, since there was no way to undertake a major construction project in Manhattan without dealing with the mob.) What it might have been like to be a rank-and-file member of a mob-controlled union doesn’t even seem to cross his mind. For as often as their safety is invoked, the everyday people of New York are only an abstraction, talked about in general terms but rarely shown, let alone heard from."

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• Fear City director Sam Hobkinson on getting people to talk in front of the camera: "This was an opportunity to tell a panoramic tale of New York, from the wiseguys on the streets all the way up to the lawmakers in City Hall, at the most dramatic point in its history,” he says. "All the agents, prosecutors, and even the mobsters were really proud of what they achieved during this period — they were excited and enthusiastic to discuss it with us, and to go in front of the camera to tell their story."
• Fear City only hints at Donald Trump having mob connections
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