James Norton Thinks 'McMafia' Could Be As Big In The USA As 'The Night Manager'

McMafia is the BBC's latest big-budget organised crime TV show and after it reached the halfway point of its run on the BBC on Sunday night, star James Norton thinks that it has the potential to be as successful in the USA as it has been in the UK.

They will be hoping that the show can replicate the popularity of The Night Manager - an adaptation of a book by John Le Carre about shadowy arm-trading and government spying that was first broadcast in early 2016. You know the one. It has everyone calling for Tom Hiddleston to be James Bond.

The Night Manager was nominated for 36 awards last year - winning 11 of them - and Norton reckons McMafia can be just as successful outside the BBC's British audience.

Norton plays Alex Godman, a Russian/British businessman who works in the finance industry but soon finds himself entangled in a massive global web of organised crime that involves him in cocaine dealing, human trafficking, and even murder. Not your average day at the office.

BBC

He is then dragged back into his family's old ways of organised crime that led to them being exiled from Russia.

The show has been picked up by AMC, who also oversaw the US broadcast of The Night Manager.

Speaking to the Television Critics Awards, Norton said: "How it goes down in the US, we'll see. I think there's an immense appetite globally for this drama right now. Everyone in America and Europe and the UK, they want to see what this state-level corruption looks like."

The show is based upon the non-fiction book by the Journalist Misha Glenny called McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld. In the book, Glenny claims that up to 15 percent of the GDP of the world could be made up through the money made from organised crime.

The show's creator, Hossein Amini, thinks that it'll be popular stateside as a result of it telling a different account to the classic Mafia stories that the American public has seen in films such as The Godfather and TV shows like The Sopranos.

PA

He said: "Gangsters aren't gangsters 100 percent of the time; the thesis to this was actually that they're not that different from us. They're trying to make money in a very different way, but they're all around us, and they're sitting next to us, and they can be lawyers, bankers, politicians, and intelligence agents. Criminality is a very, very human trait, unfortunately."

Whether it takes off in the US remains to be seen, but episode five of McMafia will be shown on the BBC next Sunday night.

Topics: TV and Film, Celebrity, BBC

Tom Wood

Tom Wood is a freelance journalist and LADbible contributor. He graduated from University of London with a BA in Philosophy before studying for a Masters in Journalism at the University of Salford. He has previously written for the M.E.N Group as well as working for several top professional sports clubs. Contact him on [email protected]

@TPWagwim