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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nHere are five reasons to add the hit Italian series to your watchlist:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s about a 60-year friendship<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
My Brilliant Friend is the story of Elena \u2018Len\u00f9\u2019 Greco and Raffaella \u2018Lila\u2019 Cerullo, who begin a lifelong friendship in their first year of school in Naples. The first season follows them from six years old to around 16. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA story of a friendship is a story that everyone understands,\u201d says Saverio Costanzo, the multi-award-winning director and co-writer of My Brilliant Friend. \u201cIt\u2019s even more moving and emotional than a love story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Friendships are notoriously more complicated than romances. \u201cLila has this wild brilliance and she\u2019s always pushing Elena out into the wider world,\u201d says executive producer Jennifer Schuur (a producer on Hannibal and a writer on Big Love). \u201cIt\u2019s not always just fun and laughter. There\u2019s actually competition and rivalry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s based on one of the most popular novels of this decade<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Elena Ferrante\u2019s four Neapolitan Novels – My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story Of A New Name (2013), Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story Of The Lost Child (2015) – have been literary sensations, selling over 10m copies and seeing Ferrante named one of Time Magazine\u2019s 100 Most Influential People in 2016 – despite being a pseudonym who never does public interviews. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Story Of The Lost Child was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and won a Gold Independent Publisher Book award in 2016. \u201cFerrante\u2019s novel is like an addiction,\u201d says Costanzo. \u201cOnce you start reading, you cannot stop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The performances are bellissimo<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The producers auditioned almost 9 000 children in Southern Italy looking for the child leads, finally settling on Elisa del Genio and Ludovica Nasti as the young Elena and Lila, and Margherita Mazzuco and Gaia Girace as their teenage selves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of them had any professional acting experience but the extensive casting process paid off: as the Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus puts it, \u201cMy 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a different side of Italy<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
My Brilliant Friend is set in post-World War II Naples, but it\u2019s far from the postcard view of Italy we\u2019re accustomed to. \u201cThey are kids coming from the Rione, a suburb of Naples full of new houses built in the middle of nothing,\u201d says Constanza. \u201cSo it\u2019s a very different perception from what we know about Naples.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis neighbourhood shapes the way they see the world,\u201d says Schuur. \u201cIt is violent, rough, and scary at times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s also \u201cdeeply patriarchal,\u201d she adds, set during a time when \u201cwomen were expected to hew to those basic roles: you will be a mother, a wife, and a housekeeper.\u201d Much of the story is about the friends\u2019 desire to go to school and change their place in society – or as Schuur puts it, their \u201cunwillingness to be treated the way at that time men were allowed to treat women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s been renewed for a second season after rave reviews<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Halfway through its first season, HBO announced they were renewing My Brilliant Friend for another season, which will be based on the second book of the series, The Story Of A New Name. No real surprise there, since My Brilliant Friend currently has a 94% critics rating and 93% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, having featured in Best Of 2018 lists in the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, Time, Vox and The Wall Street Journal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You shouldn\u2019t need more reasons to binge My Brilliant Friend but we should add that it was nominated as Best Drama Series at the 2019 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards; is being produced by Wildside (The Young Pope) and executive produced by Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), among others; and features gorgeous cinematography from Fabio Cianchetti (The Tiger and The Snow) as well as a typically delicate score from Emmy-nominee Max Richter (Taboo, Waltz with Bashir).<\/p>\n\n\n\n