My Brilliant Friend has a huge heart, packing an emotional wallop with its intimate story of female friendship

Rolling Stone

The HBO series, based on Elena Ferrante's bestselling Neapolitan Novels , delves into "very complicated, subtle emotional territory" with much success. "The TV adaptation — directed by Saverio Costanzo, who wrote it with Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Ferrante herself — covers the material with beauty and grace," says Alan Sepinwall. "The creative team understands first and foremost that the two girls are products of a specific post-war time and place, and focuses as much on building out that world as on establishing the uneven power dynamics of the central relationship. The neighborhood exists as an ecosystem unto itself, and the series explores and establishes every nook and cranny of the place. It finds unexpected beauty in all the browns and grays, and makes the area seem so disconnected from the rest of the world that it’s startling when later episodes venture out into Naples proper, or to the gorgeous island of Ischia, where the teenage Lenu spends a summer away from Lila." He adds: "My Brilliant Friend has elements in common with the iconic HBO dramas like The Sopranos, Deadwood and The Wire: organized crime, profane historical drama, a geographically small but narratively sprawling community. But it uses those elements — potently, at that — as the foundation for the much smaller subject Ferrante and her TV collaborators care about more: an inextricable female friendship, and the way it can feel like blessing and curse at once. This is a great show with a huge heart. Just be prepared for it to break yours every now and then."

ALSO:

• My Brilliant Friend miraculously captures the heart of the Elena Ferrante novels
• My Brilliant Friend is so respectful to the novels that it can’t match, let alone exceed, its source material
• The show seems to want its viewers to be uncomfortable
• What makes My Brilliant Friend really stand out is how it focuses on the inner lives of its female leads
• The series honors the intimate power of Elena Ferrante's novels
• My Brilliant Friend is too subservient to the written word: Narration becomes a crutch, direction is bland, and pacing is sluggish
• My Brilliant Friend leans into the idea of memory as a series of discrete, recollected periods or moments
• My Brilliant Friend is very fun, but it’s also a vivid depiction of history as a nightmare from which two women are trying to awake
• The Neapolitan dialect of Italian is melodic and expressive enough to make the subtitles sing
• My Brilliant Friend discriminates against blind people with HBO's decision not to feature audio description
• Behind the scenes: How My Brilliant Friend was adapted for the small screen