The HISTORY® Channel teams up with Emmy Award®-winning actor Michael Imperioli (“White Lotus,” “This Fool“) to narrate and executive produce the previously announced three-part nonfiction series “Five Families.” Produced by Propagate and Barnicle Brothers, each two-hour episode will explore the dramatic rise, collapse, and resurgence of the American Mafia.
For decades, the five crime families, the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese ruled New York and built the Mob into an underworld criminal empire. “Five Families” will explore the history of the Mafia from its rapid, violent growth in Prohibition, its golden age in the 1970s and 1980s, to the Mob’s heated war with law enforcement, through an adjustment to a new reality and criminal opportunities, breathing life back into New York’s most infamous criminal syndicate. The series also unpacks the consequences faced by the five families when they choose the American values of capitalism, individual wealth, and celebrity over the more traditional values of the Sicilian Mafia.
The three-part series is based on Selwyn Raab’s New York Times best-selling book “Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires.”
“Selwyn Raab’s ‘Five Families’ is the definitive book on the history of the American mob,” said Imperioli. “I am certain that this source material will inspire an engaging, exciting, and informative History Channel documentary on the subject. ”
“Five Families” is produced for The HISTORY® Channel by Propagate and the Barnicle Brothers. Ben Silverman, Howard T. Owens, and Chelsea Friedland serve as executive producers for Propagate. Nick Barnicle and Colin Barnicle serve as Executive Producers for Barnicle Brothers. Michael Imperioli is executive producer. Matthew Davis Walker is co-Executive Producer. Mary E. Donahue and Zachary Behr are executive producer for The HISTORY Channel. Imperioli is represented by Anonymous Content and Gersh.
A+E Networks holds worldwide distribution rights to “Five Families.”
