Stream It Or Skip It: ‘How To Become A Mob Boss’ On Netflix, A Docuseries That Shows How Legendary Organized Crime Figures Became The Big Boss

How To Become A Mob Boss is the third in a series of docuseries that provides a “handbook” on how to become a powerful but generally reviled human being, based on those who did it in the past. As with How To Become A Cult Leader and How To Become A Tyrant, each “chapter” of the handbook is associated with a particular figure, based on what aspect of becoming a mob boss they were best at.

HOW TO BECOME A MOB BOSS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Pictures of people in legitimate jobs. “Look at yourself,” says narrator Peter Dinklage. “Just another cog in the machine.” An older man says, “A working stiff stays stuck in a life. They play by the rules, and they get fucked.” That man, by the way, is Sammy “The Bull” Gravano.

The Gist: The first episode, “Land Your Dream Job,” concentrates on Al Capone, the most famous mob boss of them all. Through archival footage, animated reenactments and interviews with former mob figures like Gravano and experts in organized crime, we get a picture of Capone’s Brooklyn upbringing and how he found intimidation to be more lucrative than shining shoes. Soon, he was a teenager working for notorious thug Frankie Yale. Then, sensing opportunity, he moved to Chicago and started working for Johnny Torrio, to whom he stayed loyal as prohibition and the city’s “beer wars” started. That loyalty was eventually rewarded as Torrio retired after being shot and handed Capone the reins to the organization at the tender age of 26.

The other “chapters”: “Build A Better Operation” featuring Frank Lucas, “Dominate Through Terror” featuring Salvatore “Totò” Riina, “Don’t Go Rogue” featuring John Gotti, “Play The Long Game” featuring Whitey Bulger, and “Break The Mold” featuring Pablo Escobar.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we mentioned, this oddball series, narrated by Dinklage (who is also an executive producer) is the third in this style, following How To Become A Tyrant and How To Become A Cult Leader.

Our Take: The producers of the How To Become series have the format pretty well down by now, striking a good balance between the snarky “handbook” format that is ostensibly providing instructions on how to become these reviled people, but also giving biographical details and illustrations of just why these people are so reviled to begin with.

This series on mob bosses is interesting because of who gets interviewed. The Cult Leader docuseries certainly stepped up the game by interviewing people who used to be in the cults started by the people profiled, but Mob Boss has multiple interviews with former mob figures who, suffice to say, give some colorful observations about what it takes to get to the top of a crime organization.

In the first episode, Gravano is joined by former Colombo family capo Michael Franzese, Bobby Luisi, former underboss of the Boston Patriarca family and Renee Graziano, a Mob Wives cast member and a former consigliere for the Bonanno family, among others. As many historians and authors as this series speaks to, there is no better expert than one who actually lived the life, and we have to give the producers of this series credit for getting some pretty good people to interview.

Like the other two series, there were elements of these figures’ history that we didn’t know, and with Capone that’s tough to do. We also appreciate the fact that the producers are going with some of the more well-known crime bosses like Capone, Gotti, Bulger and Escobar but is also profiling ones like Lucas and Riina, who are less-known in pop culture but just as influential.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: A preview of the episode on “heroin tycoon” Frank Lucas, “who showed there’s more than one way to make it into the Fortune 500.”

Sleeper Star: How can we cite anyone but Sammy “The Bull” here?

Most Pilot-y Line: One of the format’s shortcomings is that the episodes are a relatively short 28 minutes, so Capone’s reign of terror as boss and his downfall due to tax evasion get a pretty cursory treatment.

Our Call: STREAM IT. How To Become A Mob Boss does a good job or presenting capsule histories of various organized crime bosses in a fun format, even if it does have to make though choices on what part of that history they can to dive into and what to skim.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.