Zero Zero Zero
Sky Atlantic/now TV, Thursdays, 9pm
In these times of so-called “Peak TV” when billions are routinely spent by the big streaming services and American cable giants on lavish and ambitious shows, we’re perhaps in danger of taking the quality of all this premium content for granted. But even by the standards of the biggest Netflix and HBO shows, Sky Atlantic’s new crime saga Zerozerozero, from the makers of the cult favourite Gomorrah, is something truly extraordinary. The series gives us three epic dramas in one, showing us in meticulous detail how the global cocaine trafficking business operates, intercutting between an Italian crime clan on one side, a Mexican cartel on the other, and in the middle a powerful American family dealing with the shipping of the product, hidden in jalapeño tins. So we get a bit of The Godfather, a slice of Scarface and a dash of recent classic Sicario, too. Yes, those are all massive films, but this series is that ambitious. Yet, even with all those flavours of the crime genre, this feels very different. The US segment of the saga, for instance, is a whole different show, more like an indie film, in which we follow the personal issues of Gabriel Byrne’s stressed-out patriarch and his troubled son (Dane Dehaan) and super-ambitious daughter (Andrea Riseborough). One minute we’re watching Dehaan getting emotional while attending a support group, the next we’re in the middle of a full-on shoot-out with agents battling cartel assassins on the streets of Monterrey, Mexico. This is all filmed in the most stunning style, with spectacular cinematography worthy of the most epic of movies. Peak TV’S just gone up a notch.