Cross-media picks for Barry Levinson fans — films, series, games and books in the same vein.
These picks circle a shared sensibility: ordinary people caught inside systems — the law, the mob, the neighbourhood — where loyalty corrodes and compromise is the price of survival. There is grit here, but also dark comedy and wry humanity. If that mix appeals, Do the Right Thing, The Firm, and Dopesick are natural starting points, and the list ranges freely across film, TV, games and books.
Film
The Last Boy Scout
Two mismatched men reluctantly partner up through LA's underbelly, trading sharp-edged banter while chasing a murderer.
Film
Floating
A young man stuck in place, caring for a broken father while his world quietly collapses around him.
Film
Do the Right Thing
A single sweltering Brooklyn day exposes how pride, history and neighbourhood belonging can ignite into crisis.
Film
The Fisher King
Two damaged men face their pasts together on a quest that blends dark comedy with the need for redemption.
Film
The Real Thing
An ex-con trying to go straight watches his family ties drag him back toward lethal consequences.
Film
Disturbing Behavior
A new student discovers his picture-perfect town hides a chilling social conformity enforced by any means necessary.
Film
The Firm
A brilliant young lawyer accepts a dream job, then discovers the firm's rewards come with a criminal price.
Film
Face
An idealist-turned-bank-robber watches his crew fracture into betrayal and murder after one job too many.
Series
Dopesick
A powerful company floods America with opioids, traced from a mining town's despair to the DEA's corridors.
Series
The Guardian
A privileged lawyer sentenced to community service is forced to confront the society he's always avoided.
Series
Hung
A down-on-his-luck former athlete improvises a morally complicated hustle just to keep his head above water.
Series
Traveler
Two ordinary grad students become fugitives overnight when a prank turns them into bombing suspects.
Series
The Assets
Two CIA analysts race against time to unmask an insider mole trading lives for secrets during the Cold War's final hours.
Series
Barry
A Midwestern hitman moves to LA and gets caught up in the city's theatre arts scene.
Series
Psych
A quick-witted outsider fakes psychic powers and lands himself at the centre of real criminal investigations.
Series
Now and Again
A suburban everyman's brain survives death inside a government super-soldier, torn between duty and his family.
Game
Quarantine (1994)
A cabdriver navigates a decayed city ruled by a corporate monopoly, surviving through wit and brute necessity.
Game
Bee Movie Game
A Jerry Seinfeld-fuelled animated world rendered as a playful racing-and-action game full of comic energy.
Game
Scarface: The World Is Yours
Tony Montana claws his way back from nothing to rebuild a criminal empire on sheer ruthless will.
Game
Made Man
A Vietnam vet's bloody ascent through organised crime is told across decades of loyalty and betrayal.
Game
Blues and Bullets
Eliot Ness is dragged back into corruption's orbit when his supposedly peaceful city refuses to stay quiet.
Game
City of Gangsters
Build a Prohibition-era crime syndicate from scratch, managing bribes, supply chains and the ever-watchful law.
Game
Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven
A cab driver reluctantly absorbed by the 1930s mob discovers loyalty and survival rarely run together.
Game
Jack Orlando: Director's Cut
A 1930s adventure set two days after Prohibition ends, as a detective navigates a city still adjusting to the change.
Book
Iron cast
Two outsiders con Boston's elite inside a gangster's club, using forbidden gifts in a city that wants them gone.
Book
Child's Play
A government witness-protection operation unravels when armed teenagers start systematically eliminating protected mobsters.
Book
Ace in the Hole
Political power and superhuman abilities collide at a charged convention where a fanatic threatens the vulnerable.
Book
O dingos, ô châteaux!
A philanthropist's fortune, a dead brother and a spoiled nephew converge in a story of greed and dark consequence.
Book
Beach Road
A small-town lawyer takes on a triple-murder case that exposes the brittle façade of an affluent community.
Book
What? Dead again?
A big-city doctor stranded in a quirky small town discovers charm and absurdity in equal, disorienting measure.
Book
The straw men
A Montana funeral and an LA abduction connect in a thriller where someone very dangerous is hiding in plain sight.
Book
The Blunderer
Two deaths, one obsessive detective and an innocent man slowly strangled by circumstantial suspicion.
Start with Do the Right Thing for its charged neighbourhood realism, or The Firm for a moral thriller about institutional corruption. On TV, Dopesick delivers the same systemic-evil-meets-human-cost storytelling.
Beach Road puts an underdog lawyer against a community murder case with real stakes, while The Straw Men blends Montana and LA in a serial-killer thriller — both reward fans of grounded, plot-driven crime.
Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven and Blues and Bullets are strong fits — both are period crime stories driven by atmosphere, moral weight and the pull of loyalty rather than pure action.