You’re not going to like this and it pains me to say so but Gomorrah: The Origins is not in the same league as Gomorrah. The wardrobe is more stylish, the characters are more approachable, the dialogue is more expensive, the locations are more attractive, the plotting is more comprehensible, and the mise-en-scène is lusher, more cinematic and less spare. But in the context of the original, these qualities aren’t so much a virtue as a capitulation.

Gomorrah (or Gomorra – La Serie, as it was in Italian, so one can never remember whether or not to include the ‘h’) ran on Sky Atlantic for five seasons from 2014 to 2021. This was a period where Anglo-American TV had long since begun its inexorable decline into glib, shallow and predictable diversity-cast wokedom. But Gomorrah felt more like a throwback to the grit, integrity and authenticity of the Get Carter era because it was made by hicks in Italy who weren’t yet aware of the new rules.

It was based on books by the Italian journalist Roberto Saviano about the brutal 1990s clan wars to control the cocaine and heroin trade in his home city of Naples, where the local Mafia are known as the Camorra. Though he sold millions of books, Saviano bitterly regrets having written them because he is now forced to live a reclusive life under constant threat of assassination.

What the TV adaptation captured very well was the squalor, remorselessness and implacability of this grey-washed netherworld where even multimillionaire clan chiefs are forced to live like trapped rats and where the lives of foot soldiers are as fleeting as those of subalterns on the Somme. It was the drama ‘where characters die before they become characters’, as one critic perfectly put it. You never knew which person you’d got to almost like was going to get it next, which made it a very nervy viewing experience.

But the discomfort was worth it because – at least till it went slightly off towards season five – you felt as though you were watching the Real Thing: uncompromising, painfully bleak but echt. And the characters were great, such as Genny Savastano, the flashy, overweight rich kid dispatched by his ruthless gang boss dad, Pietro, to South America to learn the trade. Imprisoned by drug lords, the spoilt youth is told he will never be released until he has chopped up his cell mate with a machete. Harsh but effective.

Gomorrah: The Origins is directed by the other main star of that series, Marco D’Amore (who played the simpatico killer-for-hire Ciro Di Marzio, aka L’immortale). It’s set in the late 1970s and portrays the early life of Pietro Savastano and his journey up the Camorra hierarchy. Presumably Pietro is going to experience an awakening not dissimilar to that of his future son Genny because when we meet him he’s just a goofy, amiable, shy but quietly charismatic 16-year-old kid with bum fluff on his upper lip and innocent dreams of marrying the out-of-his-league jeweller’s daughter Imma (Tullia Venezia).

Because it’s filmed with a bigger budget (in Italy, Gomorrah was as big as Game of Thrones, so it has a lot of goodwill to capitalise on) and presumably aimed at a broader market, Origins feels so sumptuous as to be almost chocolate-box by comparison. Sure, everyone’s dirt-poor, but the vibe is Oliver! dirt-poor, where young Pietro (Luca Lubrano) and his fellow street urchins all have cherubic faces and feel as though they could burst into song at any moment. As indeed they do in the very first scene in which Pietro surprises us with his slinky 1970s funk moves.

I’m not convinced by the soundtrack. I miss the industrial bleakness of Mokadelic, who scored the original, and too many popular-international-hits-of-the-day intrude. Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’, for example, which never ought to be included in a mafia drama, not even were it to be deployed as ironic counterpoint to a scene where a corpse were being dumped over the side of a yacht.

This, in turn, is a reflection of an even bigger problem: the show’s determination to remind us at every turn that it’s set in the 1970s – and wasn’t the era groovy! On the plus side, we get to wallow in some epically 1970s styling, most enjoyably in the epicene fur-trimmed outfits sported by Marc Bolan-esque gangster Angelo (Francesco Pellegrino), with his curly shoulder-length locks and soulful eyes. But does all this perfumed poncery contribute much to the sense verisimilitude? I feel not.

One more irritation: the script is rather too keen on moody eternal verities and on grand contextualising exposition. For example, if they’re at the docks waiting for a drugs shipment, one character will declare something like: ‘This is the first consignment of heroin ever to reach our impoverished southern port city. It will transform the fortunes of those of us who have taken this risk!’, while someone else cracks open a champagne bottle. In Gomorrah, they would have just grunted something in dialect and shot a dockworker in the head.

None of this means I’m not enjoying Gomorrah: The Origins, by the way. I’m halfway through episode four and loving the set-up for what looks like it might be a variant on the Red Wedding massacre in Thrones.

I like the acting, the characters, the look, the plot trajectory. But it’s pitched at the masses, not at the cognoscenti.