Fear City: New York vs The Mafia - Season 1

It can be a little dry at times, but it's an easy watch, a reminder of how dedicated professionals and breakthroughs in technology can change law and order.

The story Hobkinson presents is richer, and far more disturbing, than any that Hollywood storytelling has had to offer.

Unfortunately for director Sam Hobkinson, what happened mostly was wiretaps, surveillance and the exercise of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act... Crime busting, as Fear City shows, can be tedious.

An overwrought trip back to the mob era of the 1970s and '80s that isn't nearly as good as it should be.

Director Sam Hobkinson does a masterful job of weaving previously unheard recordings, new interviews with mob insiders and former investigators, and well-filmed dramatic re-creations.

An occasionally entertaining and never revelatory offering that dares to walk where countless documentaries have meandered before

Where Fear City truly shines is in its finer details...The result is a real-life cat-and-mouse saga of duplicity, treachery and murder that put an end to the golden age of the New York City mafia.

Fear City has "water cooler" written all over it - it's just a shame we can't gather round one for a good old gossip on Cosa Nostra.

It's sensationalist, it's wicked and it's audacious - this is the right way to unravel a crime story embedded in New York's history.

We feel we are there, watching it go down. New Yorkers may have then been afraid, but we, thanks to Hobkinson, are now merely entertained.

'Fear City' is a compelling miniseries that touches on the grime and glamour of mob rule in New York, and how it all came tumbling down.