The focus of the reviews and the scale of the hype would have been dramatically changed. The premise of My Brilliant Friend both Elena Ferrante’s celebrated Neapolitan Novels and the Italian TV adaptation thereof is largely sociological.

If the Neapolitan novels were authored by a man about the lives of two boys it would have been described differently. We also see culture where women lead the story as primarily for women, regardless of whether the themes explored are universal. My Brilliant Friend opens with 60-something Elena answering a panicked late-night call.This maintains the structure of Ferrante’s books and also, thankfully, its Italian language, when one. We can’t help but reduce culture about women down to gender in a way we simply don’t for men. The characters are so well developed and almost haunting. Part of it is related to its billing as a show simply about female friendship. In an age when everyone is making super hero and action movies, this is so refreshing and brilliant. That said, the Korean thriller has an English dub option, My Brilliant Friend doesn’t. So why isn’t bigger? One answer could be the show’s subtitles, although the popularity of Squid Game indicated foreign languages aren’t a deterrent to audiences. My Brilliant Friend, the first in Elena Ferrante’s quartet about best friends from a Naples ghetto, is a novel about power: who holds it, how it is won and lost, and what happens when power shifts occur. It’s as much a piece of social commentary as it is a revolutionary look at the way women are silenced and trapped by the patriarchy, as well as a nuanced look at class struggle and privilege. The Elena Ferrante adaptation continues with lush romance and sensitive feminist rage. Harrumphs the older woman, “She studied so much her brain’s gone.A Brilliant Friend deals with sexism, violence both political and misogynistic, family, love, shame and oppression. My Brilliant Friend: The Story of a New Name is a lush anti-romance: Review. When Lenu announces that she and Pietro are forgoing a church wedding, Immacolata interprets their tweedy anti-papal protest as her daughter’s childish naivete about how men cheat women out of their wifely standing by refusing the marriage’s consecration. While her father (Luca Gallone) parades her around town like a minor celebrity, her mother, Immacolata (Anna Rita Vitolo) - in an achingly familiar dynamic - whiplashes between pride and disdain (though mostly disdain) over an eldest daughter whose academic instruction, for which the family sacrificed so much, has made her a disapproving outsider. But until then, Lenu’s stuck back at home with her parents.

Set in the ’70s, Season 3 opens with Lila working herself to the bone at a meat processing plant to provide for her young son after fleeing her abusive husband, and Lenu trying to enjoy the fruits of her literary success and looking forward to the day she’ll marry her soon-to-be-professor boyfriend Pietro (Matteo Cecchi), after which she can move away from her family to Florence.

Review my brilliant friend