Honestly, I’m still thinking about the shoes. That sounds like a weird place to start when talking about a sprawling, decades-long epic about poverty, political corruption, and the suffocating weight of the patriarchy in post-war Naples. But those blue shoes—the ones Lila and Lenù dream up in the dust of their courtyard—basically tell you everything you need to know about the My Brilliant Friend TV show. It’s a story about wanting something better and the absolute, bone-crushing cost of trying to get it.
Most people I talk to haven't seen it. They're intimidated. It’s subtitled. It’s "prestige TV." It feels like homework. But it really isn't. It’s actually a visceral, sometimes violent, and deeply messy look at what happens when two girls realize their brains are their only way out of a neighborhood that wants to keep them small.
The Elena Ferrante Mystery and the Move to HBO
You can't talk about the show without talking about the books. The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante became a global fever dream back in the 2010s. The catch? Nobody knows who Elena Ferrante is. She’s a ghost. An anonymous pen name. When HBO and RAI teamed up to bring the My Brilliant Friend TV show to life, fans were terrified. How do you film a book that takes place almost entirely inside a narrator’s insecure, obsessive, and brilliant head?
Saverio Costanzo, the initial director, did something smart. He didn't try to make it "cinematic" in a glossy, Hollywood way. He made it feel like Neo-realism. Think Bicycle Thieves but with better lighting. The set for the neighborhood was built from scratch in Caserta, Italy. It’s massive. Over 200,000 square feet of grey stone, dust, and laundry lines. When you watch the first season, you can practically smell the exhaust and the tomato sauce. It feels claustrophobic because for Lila and Elena, it was.
Why the Casting Was a Massive Gamble
They didn't hire stars. That’s the key. For the first two seasons, they found kids who had never acted before. Gaia Girace (Lila) and Margherita Mazzucco (Elena) were discovered after a casting call that saw nearly nine thousand children. If those two didn't have chemistry, the whole thing would have collapsed.
Gaia has this look. It’s sharp. Like she’s constantly calculating how to hurt you or save you. Margherita, as Elena, has the harder job. She has to play the "quiet one" who is constantly absorbing Lila’s light and heat. It’s a dynamic that feels painfully real to anyone who has ever had a "best friend" they also kind of hated.
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The Brutality of the Rione
The show is often described as a coming-of-age story. That’s a bit too soft. It’s more of a survival story. The "Rione" (the neighborhood) is a character itself. It’s governed by the Solara family—camorristi who control the bars, the groceries, and the people.
One of the most jarring things about the My Brilliant Friend TV show is how casually it treats violence. A father throws his daughter through a window because she wants to go to middle school. A man gets murdered in a church. This isn't stylized Godfather violence. It’s ugly. It’s personal. It’s the kind of violence that happens when people are trapped in a cycle of poverty and have nowhere else to put their rage.
Education as a Weapon
In most shows, school is a backdrop for prom or sports. Here, it's the front line of a war. When Lila is forced to drop out and work in her father’s shoe shop, and Elena is allowed to continue her studies, the rift between them becomes a physical ache.
Lila is the "brilliant" one—the one who taught herself Greek while working with leather and glue. Elena is the "studious" one—the one who works twice as hard to prove she belongs in a world of professors and intellectuals. The show nails that specific type of "imposter syndrome" Elena feels as she moves into the upper classes. She speaks Italian at school but slips back into Neapolitan dialect at home. She’s caught between two worlds and belongs to neither.
Season 4 and the Final Transformation
If you’re caught up, you know things changed drastically in the final season, The Story of the Lost Child. The show did something bold: they recast the leads to reflect the characters entering middle age.
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- Alba Rohrwacher took over as Elena (she was actually the narrator's voice from the beginning).
- Irene Maiorino stepped into the role of Lila.
- Fabrizio Gifuni became the older, more cynical Nino Sarratore.
Recasting is usually a death knell for shows. Not here. Seeing Alba and Irene play these women in the 1980s feels like a natural evolution. The stakes change. It’s no longer about who gets to go to school; it’s about kidnappings, political bombings, and the literal disappearance of people. The My Brilliant Friend TV show manages to weave the history of Italy—the "Years of Lead"—into the personal lives of these two women without it feeling like a history lesson.
Common Misconceptions About the Series
A lot of people think this is a "women's show." Whatever that means. Sure, it centers on female friendship, but it’s really about power. Who has it? How do they keep it?
I’ve heard people say it’s too slow. It’s true, it takes its time. But that’s because it’s building a world. When a character dies in Season 3, it hurts because you’ve seen them since they were six years old. You knew their parents. You knew their secrets. You can't get that kind of emotional payoff in a 10-episode limited series that rushes through the plot.
Another thing: the "Nino" problem. Everyone who watches the My Brilliant Friend TV show ends up hating Nino Sarratore. He’s the pseudo-intellectual who breaks hearts and ruins lives. But the show is careful not to make him a cartoon villain. He’s a product of his father, Donato, and a symptom of a society that rewards mediocre men just for showing up.
The Language Barrier
If you aren't Italian, you might miss the nuance of the dialect. The show uses subtitles even for Italian audiences because the Neapolitan dialect is so thick. In the world of the show, speaking "proper" Italian is a sign of status. When Lila switches from dialect to Italian, she’s making a move. She’s claiming space. It’s a linguistic chess match that the directors capture beautifully through sound design and acting.
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What to Do if You’re Just Starting
Don't binge it. I know that’s the trend, but this show is heavy. It’s dense. It’s like eating a very rich meal.
- Watch the first two episodes back-to-back. They establish the childhood bond and the atmosphere of the Rione.
- Keep a cheat sheet. Seriously. The names can be confusing. There are multiple Enzos, Pietros, and marginalized characters with similar surnames (Cerullo, Greco, Carracci).
- Pay attention to the music. Max Richter’s score is haunting. He uses recurring themes that tell you exactly which ghost from the past is currently haunting the scene.
- Read the subtitles carefully. The shift between "tu" (informal) and "lei" (formal) in the Italian dialogue tells you everything about the power shifts in a room, even if the English translation doesn't always capture the sting.
The Real Legacy of the Series
The My Brilliant Friend TV show is a rare beast. It’s a faithful adaptation that actually adds something to the source material. It gives us the visual language of the neighborhood—the grey crumbling walls versus the sparkling, dangerous sea of the Mediterranean.
It reminds us that friendship isn't always "nice." Sometimes it’s a competition. Sometimes it’s a lifeline. Lila and Elena spend their whole lives trying to get away from each other, only to realize they are the only ones who truly see each other. It’s a brutal, beautiful, and deeply honest depiction of what it means to be human in a world that doesn't care if you succeed or fail.
If you want to understand modern television at its peak, you have to watch this. Start from the beginning. Pay attention to the dust. Watch the way Lila looks at the world. It’ll change how you see your own history.
Next Steps for New Viewers:
Begin with Season 1, Episode 1 ("The Dolls"). Focus on the contrast between the girls' imaginative play and the harsh reality of their apartment block. Once you finish the first season, look into the history of Naples in the 1950s to better understand the social pressures that dictate the characters' limited choices.