Our fascination with the Mafia has never been stronger.  Yet the real Cosa Nostra remains shrouded in myth and misunderstanding.

This is the story – never fully told on television before – of the modern Mafia, the most powerful criminal organisation ever.  Its rise is a gripping and often tragic tale of corruption and crime, murder and betrayal, and a growing war with police and governments across the World.  Its central protagonists – men like ‘Lucky’ Luciano and Tomasso Buscetta on one side, Giovanne Falcone and Rudolph Giuliani on the other – are some of the real heroes and villains of our time.

Full of crime action and larger than life characters, the series is also a parallel history of the last 50 years – globalisation, politics and big business – seen from its shadowy underbelly.  We follow how, from the late 1950s, the Mafia exploited the emerging international economic climate to turn itself into the biggest, most profitable multinational corporation in the world; a conglomerate comprising two very distinct organisations: the American and Sicilian Mafias.  Authorities across the globe completely failed to appreciate this separate but symbiotic relationship until it was too late.