‘My Brilliant Friend’ hits small screen
HBO debuts its eightpart adaptation of “My Brilliant Friend” (9 p.m. Sunday, TV-MA), based on the first book in a series of international best-selling novels by Elena Ferrante. A co-production with the Italian network RAI, “Friend” is presented in Italian with English subtitles. Episodes will unfold on Sunday and Monday nights through Dec. 10.
The disappearance of a close childhood companion inspires 60-year-old author Elena Greco (Elisabetta De Palo) to recall her youth in 1950s Naples, a place both warm and vibrant as well as suffocating and violent.
Elena (Elisa Del Genio) and her best friend, Lila (Ludovica Nasti), are clearly the brightest girls in their class, but that means little in a society that puts scant value on girls’ education and where children are expected to leave school and get jobs at an early age.
The two live in a world of their own. They devour “Little Women” and dream of writing novels. They stumble upon the basement hideaway of neighborhood crime lord Don Achille (Antonio Pennarella) and embark on a quixotic walk to the beach that ends in humiliation and disaster.
The young performers and the depiction of their private world are entirely believable. At the same time, there is a sad solemnity to young Elena that leaves her a little opaque. That may be intentional.
The production takes place on an elaborate set that is at once something to behold and self-evidently artificial, robbing the series of the vibrancy of Italian streets seen in so many movies directed by Rossellini, De Sica or Fellini in the 1950s, this story’s time period.
I suppose this jewel box setting and the series’ languid pace are supposed to evoke a dream world. I, for one, was intrigued but not entirely enchanted by “My Brilliant Friend.”
› As tragedies go, it’s hard to top the story behind “A Murder in Mansfield” (9 p.m. Saturday, ID, TV-14). Eleven-year-old Collier Boyle’s world was rocked on New Year’s Eve 1989 when his father, Dr. John Boyle, murdered Noreen Boyle after 20 years of marriage. With scant physical evidence, Boyle was convicted after the testimony of his young son.
Nearly 30 years later, Collier returns to the scene of the tragedy and agrees to visit his father in prison, their first encounter in decades.
“Murder” is produced by Barbara Kopple, a twotime Oscar-winning director for “Harlan County, USA” (1976) and “American Dream” (1991), documentaries about contentious strikes and labor strife. She’s also known for her 2006 film “Shut up and Sing,” about right-wing media efforts to silence country singers the Dixie Chicks. Not to be confused with “Shut Up and Dribble” (9 p.m. Saturday, TV-MA), the Showtime series about the NBA, politics and culture, concluding this weekend.
› Sundance invites viewers to spend the weekend with the four-part documentary series “Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle” (9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday), airing on the 40th anniversary of the mass suicide/ massacre.
› The four-part series “Inside North Korea’s
Dynasty” (Sunday, National Geographic, TV-14) concludes with a look at Kim Jong Il’s adjustment to the post-Cold War world (9 p.m.) and the massive famine that beset North Korea in the 1990s.
The fourth installment (10 p.m.) focuses on current leader Kim Jong Un and his ascension to the “family business” at 28.
The hour chronicles his peculiar fascination with Western sports and pop culture and how he ruthlessly had members of his family killed in order to consolidate power.
Like most things having to do with the secretive hermit kingdom, much of “Dynasty” seems too strange to believe. Clips include performances by Kim Jong Un’s personal K-pop band, consisting entirely of fetching young women playing electric guitars, violins and synthesizers. The theme to “Rocky” will never seem the same.
Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin .tvguy@gmail.com.