International shows have been gaining many acclamations for the last few years, and this also owes to the popularity and massive usage of OTT platforms. We are introduced to a vast array of culture hailing around the globe. Just like Money Heist and Dark, this time, we are gifted with the Neapolitan and Italian series My Brilliant Friend, a coming-of-age drama series created by Saverio Costanzo for HBO, RAI, and TIMvision. The series is inspired by the novel sequence Neapolitan Novels, written by Elena Ferrante. And good news, the show is set to adapt the entire literary work over four eight-episode seasons. On April 30, 2020, the series was renewed for a third season, to be based on the third novel in the series, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. But there hasn’t been any official date decided as of yet, and might take some time to come due to the pandemic. The series started back in the year 2018 on November 18.
The series is a co-production between Italian production companies Wildside, Fandango, The Apartment, Mowe, and international film group Umedia. Just like its name, My Brilliant Friend is brilliant and witty, with the exploration of a naked human friendship amid the crisis strata of the postwar Naples’s society. The description of the show on their official HBO website goes like this, “When the most important friend in her life seems to have disappeared without a trace, Elena Greco, a now-elderly woman immersed in a house full of books, turns on her computer and starts writing the story of their friendship.” The second season was released this year in February. The placidness of the show is heightened by the soulful list of music and the reception is impressive enough. One review about the show says, “My Brilliant Friend is an expansive epic that gleans rapturous beauty from the most desolate of circumstances, but it is the intimacy between the central duo – and the remarkable performances that bring them to life – that audiences will remember most vividly.” The show is officially termed as “fresh and green”.
My Brilliant Friend stars Elisa Del Genio, Ludovica Nasti, Anna Rita Vitolo, Luca Gallone, Imma Villa, Antonio Milo, Adriano Tammaro, Valentina Acca and the list goes on.