Earlier this year, someone who has a reason to know these things was telling me that Italy’s version of The Bill was not only run past the police for their thoughts, but sent to the Mafia for script notes too. Both organisations have a brand to protect after all.

I am confident that no such approval process was involved at any stage of the making of Gomorrah, a superb Italian film based on Roberto Saviano’s thoroughly researched book on one of the country’s leading crime families. As adapted by six different screenwriters, each focusing on a storyline of their own, under the guidance of director Matteo Garrone, it does a brilliant job at demystifying the accreted bullshit about crime that acts like Viagra for so many filmmakers who should know better.

There’s a raw documentary feel to Gomorrah, which isn’t to say it’s made without guile or poetry. The presentation of the everyday is highly skilful, from the opening sequence in which some random gangsters are shot in a tanning salon; through the implicit racial politics present in the film’s depiction of black, Chinese, and other non-native communities; and in the plausible journey of two childhood friends who decide they’re going to do crime their way and not bow to established criminal figures.

As suggested already, don’t mistake naturalism for lack of artistry. There’s some skilful scenesetting done with camerawork that establishes different stories happening on different levels of a multi-layered and poverty-stricken concrete neighbourhood that surely can’t be in the same country rhapsodied about by Jamie Oliver and the like.

A key scene captures the story’s overall thesis brilliantly: a cynical middle-aged gangster goes to visit a family who are offering him yet more of their land for illicit and dangerous dumping, in the company of a young sidekick. While there, an old lady offers them a basket of peaches, which are accepted with grace. But when the two men drive away, the older man insists that the fruit is thrown away — the peaches stink, having been grown on land that’s rotten with toxicity. It’s a vivid depiction of the corruption at the heart of this film, and the gangster’s sidekick is moved to quit his apprenticeship there and then.

I have no problem with heightened reality in films about crime or any other subject. Sexy Beast is one of my all-time favourite films, and it’s close to caricature at times. But it’s a film rich with character and drama, exactly what you don’t get in a Guy Ritchie film or any number of other dodgy Brit gangster flicks. Give me (the original) Get Carter, The Long Good Friday, and Brighton Rock any day, and please, having seen Gomorrah, someone please give me a British equivalent that has its power, its scope, its authenticity. You never know — having seen this, I’m tempted to have a crack myself…