When Crime Inc., a British documentary series, was produced by Thames Television and released on UK television in 1984, I can't say that I was greatly interested in organized crime in the US, or anywhere else for that matter: I'd seen The Godfather & The Godfather: Part II and that was enough for me. However, after watching Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno interviewed in this series and all the attendant surveillance footage from the FBI etc., I must say I found it pretty riveting stuff. When they talk about organized crime in the US, they really mean it: large-scale crime is organized there on an almost corporate basis and it is interesting to foreigners such as myself of the how and why large-scale organized crime has thrived in America for so long. As such, Crime Inc. is an excellent documentary series and it contains many interesting facts, recorded anecdotally and otherwise, about the Mafia in the US.
The British, it seems to me, actually make the best documentaries for t.v. and film generally and make the best documentaries on America and American subjects more particularly, and why this should be so, I cannot say; however, before I am accused of being excessively anglophile, I will say that I make such a statement with complete and unabashed bias, as I am English-born. No doubt many Americans will choose to differ: but it does seem that British documentary-makers filming documentaries in the US about the US are perhaps not weighed down with a lot of the local cultural baggage, preconceived notions, and locally biased views that some American documentary-makers have about subjects in their own country, and as such British documentaries on US subjects tend to be more, well, objective, as an outsider's view often is. That may well be why documentaries or documentary series for film or t.v. such as Crime Inc., produced 24 years ago now, worked, and still work so well.
