Informer 3838

I absolutely love the underbelly series but unfortunately this one was just not what we are used to

No one could ever say that the Gangland Wars were dull. But this look behind the lawyer who took down empires in the war has been a bit lax. Yes of course things were secretive in the lead up to the filming of the show and of course the commission was yet to hand down findings, but for this to be in the same league as an underbelly drama? yeah its got it. Yeah you way not like it but I thought it was terrific, done respectfully as possible.

The Melbourne Gangland war was the bloodiest in any gangland war in Australia, so the cast of course are following what happened during those years. Gyton Grantley, Robert Mammone returning to the roles that made them famous with a stellar cast (new to the Underbelly universe or returning) providing excellent storyline telling, even with the events ripped from the headlines, the cast and crew put their lives at risk to make sure the story was told..

Seems they forgot to spend the time an energy on a script. Strong central performance can't rescue the lack of coherent storytelling on what could have been compelling drama. Breaking the fourth wall, heavy reliance on a soundtrack and epileptic editing is deflection from a very thin and disappointing piece.

I think this mini-series makes more sense to Victorian or even Australian residents. It is the latest of the Underbelly cash cow spins offs and although not as good as Underbelly it still managed to keep me interested and engaged enough. Partially because I complemented it with ABC's podcast Trace - the Informer.

Let's face it, Carl Williams (Gyton Grantley) and Tony Mokbel (Robert Mammone) are amongst some of the best locally grown actors but in this mini-series they did look tired, worn out and not as engaged as in the previous series.

Nevertheless, I still found myself enjoying the series all the way to the end mostly because in the end of the day it's true crime and as such, I found it still hard to understand how our modern justice system allowed this level of corruption to go on for such a long time.

Anyways, I do recommend this to any fan of true crime but you'll need to do your own research to better understand the story behind it as the main Underbelly series, due to at time's ongoing court proceedings, did not cover Nicola Gobbo's story.