My Brilliant Friend: Where to Watch Italian Coming-Of-Age Drama & Is It Good?

On September 9, the fourth season of My Brilliant Friend – an HBO series based on Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, one of the most popular literary series of the last decade – will be released.

The Original Source is One of the Most Important Literary Works of the 21st Century

Neapolitan Quartet is a series of four novels. In the early 2010s, its popularity spread beyond the borders of its native Italy, and it became an international phenomenon with millions of copies sold.

This is the story of two friends, or rather of one friendship – the shy Elena and the confident Lila. The girls live in a poor neighborhood of Naples in the 1950s and do everything they can to escape the dirt and destruction: the first throws herself into her studies, the second marries a local businessman.

However, the novel does not focus on the two main characters and their largely toxic friendship: Ferrante shifts the focus to their peers, other residents of the neighborhood, parents and children. The result is nominally a soap opera, but not one that lazily throws out plot twists, but one that skillfully blends the history of postwar Italy, social drama, and psychology.

It is one of the most important books of the 21st century and easily justifies its worldwide popularity. It is not surprising that in Italy each episode of the series is watched by 6 to 7 million people – almost one in ten of the country's population.

My Brilliant Friend is a Meticulously Crafted Drama

However, even apart from the original source, the series My Brilliant Friend works very well on its own. First of all, it is an excellent costume drama, inspired by Italian neorealism, about the formation of personality in a difficult social environment.

Everything about the production of the series is done at the highest level: a huge Neapolitan district was built especially for the shooting, which is transformed according to the plot, and several authentic costumes were sewn for each of the dozens of characters.

In the second season, the budget of the series also increased significantly – in many episodes there are several hundred extras, dozens of attributes of the period are recreated around them: from signs and posters to cars. Thanks to this titanic work, a rare sense of authenticity is created, the reliability of what you see on the screen.

My Brilliant Friend is not only a drama that begins in the middle of the 20th century, but also a rather instructive historical series that, in all its splendor, shows a portrait of Italy slowly rising from its knees after the devastating Second World War.

So if you had doubts about watching this show then, well, don't.

Where to Watch My Brilliant Friend & How Many Episodes Are There?

The series currently consists of three seasons of eight episodes each, all of which are available on Max.