The best Gangster shows to binge-watch this weekend

Gomorrah (Sky)

Life in the Naples Mafia (the Camorra) is nasty, brutish, short – and nothing like Goodfellas. Even when you’ve made your millions from the drugs trade, there’s nothing to spend it on save your fleet of armoured 4 x 4s and your gilded cage in some bleak, rundown suburb which it’s never safe to leave because you’ll only end up arrested or shot.

Spoiler alert: almost everyone dies over the four seasons of this mesmerisingly bleak, moodily soundtracked, fabulously compulsive drama. But though it’s immensely depressing and quite shockingly violent – it has been described as the series ‘where characters die before they become characters’ – it’s also just about the most brilliant thing on TV. The characters are so well drawn and involving that you’ll find yourself rooting for them even as they do the most terrible things; the plot is Shakespearean in its sweep, drama and complexity; and the ruthlessness of its integrity (wickedness goes unpunished; no one is saved) takes the breath away.