McMafia

McMafia is a British crime drama television series created by Hossein Amini and James Watkins, and directed by Watkins. It is inspired by the book McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by journalist Misha Glenny (2008). The series stars James Norton as Alex Godman, the British-raised son of a Russian mafia boss living in London whose father is trying to escape from the world of organised crime. It is co-produced by BBC, AMC Networks, and Cuba Pictures. It premiered in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 1 January 2018, and in the United States on AMC on 26 February 2018.

Main cast

 * James Norton as Alex Godman
 * David Strathairn as Semiyon Kleiman, Russian-Israeli businessman
 * Juliet Rylance as Rebecca Harper, Alex's fiancée
 * Merab Ninidze as Vadim Kalyagin, powerful member of the Russian mafia
 * Aleksey Serebryakov as Dimitri Godman, Alex's father
 * Maria Shukshina as Oksana Godman, Alex's mother
 * Faye Marsay as Katya Godman, Alex's sister
 * David Dencik as Boris Godman, Alex's uncle
 * Oshri Cohen as Joseph, Israeli bodyguard
 * Sofia Lebedeva as Lyudmilla Nikolayeva, beauty therapist
 * Caio Blat as Antonio Mendez
 * Kirill Pirogov as Ilya Fedorov
 * Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Dilly Mahmood, Indian business partner
 * Karel Roden as Karel Benes

Recurring cast

 * Yuval Scharf as Tanya
 * Anna Levanova as Natasha
 * Clifford Samuel as Femi
 * Maria Mashkova as Masha
 * Kemi-Bo Jacobs as Karin
 * Atul Kale as Benny Chopra
 * Evgeni Golan as Marat
 * Eve Parmiter as Jennifer
 * Tim Ahern as Sydney Bloom
 * Ellie Piercy as Sandrine
 * Danila Kozlovsky as Grigory Mishin
 * Alexander Dyachenko as Oleg
 * Fernando Cayo as Guillermo Alegre
 * Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina as Vadim Kalyagin's mother

Production
McMafia was inspired by journalist Misha Glenny's non-fiction book McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, published in 2008. The series took a few stories from Glenny's book, which documents various mafia organisations thriving around the world today. The series was created by Hossein Amini and James Watkins, and is a co-production of the BBC, AMC, and Cuba Pictures, in association with Twickenham Studios.

The BBC announced the series in October 2015. In April 2016, it was announced that James Norton had been cast in the lead role of Alex Godman and that co-creator Watkins would direct all eight episodes. Additional casting, including Maria Shukshina and Aleksey Serebryakov as Alex's parents, and David Strathairn as a shady Israeli businessman, was announced in November 2016. In addition to Amini and Watkins, David Farr, Peter Harness, and Laurence Coriat co-wrote the series.

Filming locations included London, Zagreb, Split, Opatija, Primošten, Qatar, Mumbai, Prague, Cairo, Belgrade, Belize, Istanbul, Moscow and Tel Aviv. The budget was several million pounds per episode.

Reception
McMafia has an approval rating of 71% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 38 reviews, and an average rating of 6.7/10.

Lucy Mangan, writing for The Guardian said that the show was "beautifully put together" and described the script as "a cut above average".

Planned second series
In 2018, BBC One announced that it had recommissioned the programme for an eight-part second series.

In March 2022, it was reported that the planned second series had been cancelled, but author and executive producer Misha Glenny immediately denied the report on Twitter.