Every criminal organisation has a code. Some of them are written on the skin. Others are spoken only once, in a room no outsider will ever enter. Mafia: Behind the Bloodshed, the new four-part documentary series co-produced by Picasso Film and Svet Solutions Media, set out to find those codes, and the people who have lived by them.
The series premiered on Sky HISTORY in the UK on Tuesday 6 October 2026, with new episodes on Tuesdays at 9pm and the full series available to catch up on Sky HISTORY.
The series opens inside Russia's "thieves in law", a brotherhood born in the Soviet prison camps and bound by a code that rejects the state, the family and any life outside the criminal world. In the Vory, rank and history are carried on the body: tattoos that tell anyone who can read them who a man is, what he has done and where he stands.
In Japan, the ink speaks a different language. Dragons, chrysanthemums and waves, hand-tapped over hundreds of hours, mark a lifelong commitment to the Yakuza. The episode looks at an organisation that once operated almost in plain sight, and at what loyalty, honour and belonging mean in a world that is steadily closing in on it.
From the hills of Calabria, the 'Ndrangheta grew into one of the most powerful criminal networks on earth, built on blood ties and a silence that has rarely been broken. This episode follows those who hunt its fugitive bosses across the rugged southern Italian countryside, and those who have turned their backs on the family to speak.
The final episode walks the streets of New York's Chinatown at night, where the Triads and their street gangs once controlled gambling, protection and the neighbourhood's secrets. Men who grew up inside that world return to the places where it happened, and tell the story in their own words.
Filmed across Russia, Japan, Italy and the United States, the series brings together rare first-hand testimony from investigators, experts and former members of these organisations, combined with archive material and cinematic re-enactments. It is a co-production between Picasso Film and Svet Solutions Media, made with the participation of Hearst and RTL, and brought to UK audiences by Sky HISTORY.
Mafia: Behind the Bloodshed is the UK version of the series. Its international version, Mafia: Behind the Code, is distributed worldwide by Blue Ant.
For Svet Solutions Media, it is the kind of project we love most: long-form documentary storytelling that depends on access, trust and the ability to work on the ground, wherever the story leads.
