Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mafia Spies’ On Paramount+, A Docuseries About How The CIA And The Chicago Mafia Conspired To Assassinate Fidel Castro

Mafia Spies is a five-part docuseries, directed by Tom Donahue (Danny Strong is one of the EPs), about how, in the early 1960s, the CIA recruited people in the Chicago mafia to assassinate Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro. Via interviews with experts, some people who participated in the revolution that brought Castro to power, archival footage and extensive reenactments, Donahue tells the story of how Castro took over Cuba, how he quickly came to be considered a grave threat by the US government, and how the seemingly unbelievable alignment between the CIA and the mafia took place.

MAFIA SPIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of Washington, DC, then we see people around a table watching filmed footage. “People in the 1950s had very little idea of what the CIA was or what it did,” says a voice.

The Gist: The first episode examines Cuba under Fulgencio Batista, the dictator that Castro and his revolutionaries deposed in January of 1959. In the pre-Castro days, Cuba in general and Havana in particular was a hotbed for celebrities and other wealthy Americans who could go there, gamble, and do other unsavory things without the restrictions of American laws. The various organized crime families in the US each had a piece of the action, and the Eisenhower administration aligned with the autocratic Batista, despite his penchant for rounding up dissenters.

But revolution was stirring on the eastern end of the island, especially amongst the country’s plantation workers and other working class poor who never got the trickle-down effect all the money flowing in Havana should have had. Castro, a lawyer who ran for the Cuban senate earlier in the 1950s, became the charismatic leader of the revolutionary movement. And as it pressed west to Havana, he appeared on the CIA’s radar.

It wasn’t until after he came to power, and started aligning himself with the communist regime in the Soviet Union, did the government consider Cuba a threat, given its close proximity to Florida. In the last year of his presidency, Eisenhower instructed the CIA to take Castro out, and they took it upon themselves to get in touch with the Chicago mafia through an intermediary. After all, they lost their lucrative Havana concerns as soon as Castro came into power.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The reenactments in Mafia Spies are so extensive, the series feels more like a scripted series like The Offer.

Our Take: Mafia Spies is an exercise in frustration, for a number of reasons. The first of which is the fact that the series takes six hour-long episodes to tell a story that likely could have been told in 3 or 4 hours. This means that Donahue has all the time in the world to tell this story, blunting the impact of what is the “killer app”, as it were, of this docuseries: The CIA working with the Mafia.

The first episode is a perfect example of this. While we appreciated its informative consideration of Cuba, and especially Havana, before Castro, Donahue spent almost that entire first hour discussing it. Yes, there’s a reason why organized crime families had as much an interest in seeing Castro’s demise as the US government did, but there was really no need to spend an hour laying out the case. We know the mob ruled things in Havana, and we know why Castro and his revolutionaries rose up to overthrow the corrupt Batista. Most of this could have been explained in fifteen minutes.

Another weakness in the first episode is that the players in this story aren’t well defined. It’s a flurry of names and faces that aren’t explained as well as they should be. On top of that, the most significant representation of these figures is through the actors that play them in the reenactments, which just makes things even more confusing.

The story, which is adapted from Thomas Maier’s book Mafia Spies: The Inside Story of the CIA, Gangsters, JFK, and Castro (Maier is also interviewed for the series), is of course an intriguing one. The CIA, tasked with killing another world leader, wanted a way to cover their tracks, and who better to contact than mafiosos who also had an axe to grind with Castro? There are numerous narrative possibilities here. But after the semi-snoozer of the first episode, though, we’re definitely concerned the story will get lost in all the padding Donahue had to add to fill out all six episodes.

Sex and Skin: Apparently John F. Kennedy had a great time in Havana when he was a young senator. We see that in the reenactments, but no real skin.

Parting Shot: We see Johnny Roselli, played by Nick Annunziata in the reenactments, holding a rifle and pointing it to the camera as a voice says the go-between would “team up with the CIA to create one of the strangest and most illegal chapters in the history of the United States.”

Sleeper Star: It was interesting listening to Antoinette Giancana, daughter of mafioso Sam Giancana, talking about what she heard from her father about the old days of Havana.

Most Pilot-y Line: Too many reenactments. Yes, this is a broken record if you’ve read our reviews. But we can’t say it too many times.

Our Call: SKIP IT. While Mafia Spies has a good story at its core, the series itself is at least two episodes too long to tell the story effectively.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.