“The Sea Beyond”: The story of a juvenile detention, Italian-style
The latest television export from Italy is called “The Sea Beyond,” but you could be excused if you thought you were watching “Italy’s Next Top Juvenile Offender.” The young performers playing the inmates of a Naples detention center are molto bello. It’s hot in there, and we’re not just talking about the steam in the showers, though there’s a lot of that, too.
And the eye candy isn’t just human. Like “My Brilliant Friend” and “Gomorrah,” “The Sea Beyond” exploits the Neapolitan sun, water and sky for maximum pictorial effect, and it wraps itself in the city’s architectural and scenic splendors. Mount Vesuvius looms in the distance while the fictional prison that serves as the primary location looks like a factory building converted to industrial- chic dormitory housing for tech workers. A naval base in real life, it has a picturesque location on a pier; the show’s Italian title, “Mare Fuori,” translates more literally to “The Sea Outside,” as in the sea outside the prison windows.
These are most likely a few of the reasons for the popularity of “The Sea Beyond,” whose first season (from 2020) premieres in the U.S. on Tuesday on streaming service MHZ Choice. Italian viewers are getting ready for Season 4, whose filming was occasionally interrupted by the screams of fans clustered outside the prison gates.
Based on the first season, it is easy enough to understand the effect of “The Sea Beyond” on T-shirt sales and young heart rates. But the series does not ascend to the rarefied levels of teen
age melodrama where you would find James Dean or “The O.C.” (a show that “The Sea Beyond” has in its DNA). Its heart is pure soap opera, and the writing and direction do not aspire to more.
Anguished wailing and collapsing in tears take up a lot of screen time, with the occasional didactic lecture from a warden or parent. Hard slaps are followed by hard hugs. Prison-movie cliches are indulged, perhaps with a wink or perhaps not; a tough guy actually says “Tell my pa I wasn’t scared” as he dies in a guard’s arms. When coherent plotting becomes too much to ask, coincidence takes over; characters talk about their plans or leave their hiding places at exactly the wrong moments.
This is all reasonably entertaining, in a while-youcheck-your- email kind of way. When you get to the part about the girl who shoplifts a dress and goes to surprise her boyfriend at the fancy hotel where he’s staying but gets there a few minutes after the prostitute sent to his room as a gift
by a gangster, you may roll your eyes, but you probably won’t stop watching.
Cristina Farina, the show’s creator and head writer, shrewdly exploits the way in which her youth prison story sits at the nexus of a cluster of dramatic genres — family, romantic, social, criminal, medical, classroom, striving- artist — to give the show variety.
The first season is structured around the fight for the soul of Filippo (Nicolas Maupas), a rich boy from northern Italy who is a classic jailhouse innocent. Representing good is Filippo’s fellow newbie Carmine (Massimiliano Caiazzo), an aspiring hairdresser who happens to be a member of a low-level crime family; on Filippo’s other shoulder is Ciro (Giacomo Giorgio), a young career criminal who is the detention center’s alpha male.
These three go through a convoluted cycle of betrayals, beat- downs and rapprochements, stretched beyond dramatic coherence in order to fill the season’s 12
episodes while landing on a cliffhanger. The numerous subsidiary stories include the travails of a boy and his pit bull (named Tyson) and the wary romance between Filippo, who is a piano prodigy, and the equally talented Naditza (the charismatic Valentina Romani), who has her own problems in the girls’ ward with an auburn-haired psycho Svengali named Viola (Serena De Ferrari).
The presence of girls and boys in the same jail, separated by a f limsy fence and guarded with a laxity that allows for frequent hookups, reflects a melodramatic license that runs through the show. Despite the objective seriousness of the situation (many of the teenage inmates have killed someone, though with extenuating circumstances detailed in copious flashbacks) and the constant threats and violence, there is an innocence of tone and a general lack of real fright or tension. As drama goes, that’s a failing; as youth-focused cultural phenomena go, it’s a feature.