Take a tip from the Italians and switch on to this drama
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels are celebrated bestsellers in Italy. And they are celebrated bestsellers in the UK. HBO and RAI’S television adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels,
My Brilliant Friend (Sky Atlantic), is one of the best-loved and mostwatched TV shows in Italy, with audiences regularly reaching seven million. And in the UK… well, let’s just say that an industry magazine recently described My Brilliant Friend’s UK viewing figures as “boutique”.
Which is a nice way of saying “hardly anyone watches it, but those of you who do, gosh, aren’t you clever?”. But if My Brilliant Friend
– this version, by the same film-makers – were a film, it would be a mainstream success, enjoyed in cinemas and tipped for the Oscars. British TV drama has a brain-drain problem. In that, when we watch so many of them, all cliffhangers and kitchen islands, our brains go down the drain. TV execs would tell us that 9pm is when we switch our brains off, not on. Che peccato!
Well, a few thousand boutique viewers and I will continue to be enriched by the best drama on TV, which is now in its third series, and firmly into the mid-1960s. The story revolves around the helter-skelter friendship between two girls from Naples, Elena (Margherita Mazzucco) and Lila (Gaia Girace), whose lives rebound and ricochet off each other’s constantly, as the decades go by. As we reach the events of Ferrante’s third novel, with Daniele Luchetti picking up directing duties from the formidable Saverio Costanzo, bookish Elena is a celebrated, controversial novelist. Lila – beautiful, feral, brilliant Lila – works in a salami factory.
This episode opened where series two left off, at the launch of Elena’s novel, where she is charmed, patronised and groped by the Milanese intelligentsia. It is a night to celebrate her success, yet, at dinner, she must be pleased for her dull fiancé, who has been made a professor in Florence. “We women are given the task of being happy about their success,” says the fiancé’s mother. Ferrante’s fury is etched on Mazzucco’s face.
Elena’s novel – semiautobiographical, confessional, sexually explicit – has caused a stir in Italy and, returning to Naples, Elena sees first-hand the alchemical effect it has on all the men she knows, each now seeing her through a prism of disgust and lust. But always on her – and the viewer’s – mind is the absent Lila.
Sublime television. And not a cliffhanger or kitchen island in sight.
After four hours of breathless, brainless action and Martin Compston sweating over mortgage forms, Our House (ITV) finally came to an end. And I know what you’re thinking. “£1.7 million? For that house? In that part of London?” They should be asking for double that in this market. If they had, maybe they could have afforded to buy a new bulb for that grotty flat they shared. This is where the dramatic denouement of the whole series took place, but I can’t really tell you what happened, because I couldn’t see a thing. The contrast button on my remote control has taken the rest of the year off in protest.
Well, that was tripe, wasn’t it? There was, it must be said, some satisfaction in that ending – in which Compston’s slippery, unfaithful husband, Bram (Bram?), attempted to do the right thing for once by recording a confession about the fatal car crash, the blackmail and the involvement of the malevolent Toby/mike (Rupert Penry-jones). But this, of course, landed wife Fi (Tuppence Middleton) in the muck and she was soon carted off by the police for killing Mike/toby.
However, even this neat bit of plotting was undone by the fact that it was never clear who we were supposed to be rooting for. Not Fi, surely, as she got her comeuppance. Not Bram (Bram?), as he was a wee scamp who couldn’t keep it in his trousers (and killed a child, too, which is the sign of a rotter in an ITV drama). The unfaithful neighbour (Weruche Opia)? The irritating blackmail woman? The useless solicitor? (I really enjoyed the bit of Tv-drama shorthand which informed us the solicitor was useless – he had a cold! No competent solicitor would get a cold.)
I have many more questions – wouldn’t you taste it if someone crushed dozens of pills into your wine? Why was Tuppence Middleton acting like she was an advert for Nurofen? – but what’s the use? This is fast-food TV, intended to be consumed quickly and forgotten instantly. It’s TV that says “if you want art, go to a gallery”. And there’s no use giving up and turning on Netflix – they’re making the same shows over there.
My Brilliant Friend ★★★★★
Our House ★