When you watch a movie or a show that fits so comfortably in your wheelhouse, all you want to do is find something that scratches the same itch. Over the years, I’ve experienced serious bouts of Sicario fever. A film about the American government putting together a task force to stop a Mexican drug cartel is an easy sell for crime-thriller enthusiasts, but Sicario is buoyed by impressive A-listers (Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin), a smart script from a pre-Yellowstone Taylor Sheridan, and taut direction from Denis Villeneuve. Its immensely bleak subject matter is matched only by the stark beauty in every frame.
It’s possible to chase the Sicario high in cinema — look no further than its sequel, Day of the Soldado, or the majority of Michael Mann’s filmography. But while there are plenty of crime dramas on television, few outside of Breaking Bad deliver that kind of storytelling with the same level of craftsmanship. So if you’re a fellow sicko who loves Sicario and wants to imagine what it would look like if it was basically quadruple in length and shot on location across five countries, allow me to introduce you to ZeroZeroZero.
Co-created by Stefano Sollima (who also happened to direct Day of the Soldado), ZeroZeroZero is an eight-episode miniseries that dives into the minutiae of the international drug trade, following a large shipment of cocaine from the perspectives of the buyers (an Italian mafia), the sellers (a Mexican cartel), and the brokers (Louisiana shipping moguls). The series carries familiar hallmarks of prestige TV: sprawling scope, morally compromised antiheroes, and sumptuous production values. But what makes ZeroZeroZero unique is that Sollima isn’t interested in glamorizing the drug trade so much as mapping out the nitty-gritty of its ecosystem, where every handshake, double-cross, and shipping mishap reverberates across continents.
One episode can pivot from a brutal cartel ambush in Mexico to a tense family dinner in the Italian countryside, then suddenly out to sea for some trouble aboard a cargo ship crossing the Atlantic. The connective tissue is the literal cocaine, but the series is really interested in exploring the ways in which violence, capitalism, and political instability collapse into one another. If that sounds overly serious, rest assured: ZeroZeroZero is also wildly entertaining — if you have the stomach for it. Every episode contains at least one nail-biting action set piece, whether it’s gangsters or civilians getting caught in the crossfire.
Sollima, Janus Metz (Andor), and Pablo Trapero (Echo 3) direct the action with the same clinical precision Villeneuve brought to Sicario. Shootouts erupt suddenly and end even faster. Characters make catastrophic decisions under pressure. Nobody feels safe for very long. The show’s commitment to realism extends to its visual language, too. ZeroZeroZero filmed on location in New Orleans, Mexico, Senegal, Morocco, and Italy. As a result, the world its characters inhabit feels tactile and lived in.
Amid so many overlapping storylines, the most compelling one follows Manuel Contreras (Harold Torres), a sergeant in the Mexican army who steadily rises through the cartel ranks after proving to be ruthless and strategically indispensable. In lesser hands, Manuel’s arc of, well, breaking bad might’ve felt too cliché, but Torres plays him with a stillness that’s genuinely unnerving. He’s not charismatic in the traditional antihero sense; he’s terrifying because of how easily he abandons his morality within systems built on survival.
For all its globe-trotting ambition, however, ZeroZeroZero never spirals out of control like its characters. At eight episodes, the series resists the bloat that often plagues prestige dramas with similarly dense plotting. Despite these qualities, ZeroZeroZero flew under the radar after premiering in 2020. Perhaps, in the midst of a pandemic, people preferred to seek out comfort watches over a nihilistic thriller with a body count. (I can’t relate; Sicario is one of my comfort movies.)
Whatever the reason, ZeroZeroZero deserves rediscovery — especially for viewers still chasing the particular high Sicario delivered. The series captures the same suffocating dread, the same fascination with institutional violence, and the same understanding that the war on drugs is self-perpetuating. The difference is that ZeroZeroZero has eight hours to burrow under your skin instead of two — and unlike the endless stream of algorithmic crime dramas flooding your homepage, this one actually scratches the itch.
