The show tells the stories of Luis Cláudio and Uólace, better known by their nicknames Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha), respectively, who are two best friends who live in a notorious Rio slum, in a community of drug dealers, hustlers, and teenagers struggling to fulfill their dreams.

In 2017 (10 years after the movie) a new series was aired, continuing the story about Laranjinha and Acerola, now fathers of their own sons: Davi (Luan Pessoa) and Clayton (Carlos Eduardo Jay), respectively.

[3] Tim Goodman, writing for San Francisco Chronicle, praised it for having "the kind of energy you don't get often on American television, and the realness of the shot-on-location scene really makes each episode feel like a minimovie."

Whilst noting its stylistic similarities to City of God, Goodman wrote that "the series lacks the relentless violence of the film," even though "it's not without the same ominous sense of death.

"[4] According to Charles McGrath of The New York Times, "[t]he closest American popular television has ever come to this kind of close-up realism is probably the drug-dealing scenes in "The Wire" on HBO, and even they seem a little tame and stagey compared with what takes place in Dona Marta."

""City of Men" is more than just a fictionalized documentary, though;" he continues, "it has real humor and sweetness, much of it derived from the interaction of Acerelo and Laranjinha, who are an inspired buddy pair.

"[5] Slate's Troy Patterson wrote that it "smoothly toggles between working as a crime melodrama and a coming-of-age tale, as a harrowing piece of social commentary and a gentle bit of farce.