The Bad Guy: Prime Video’s dark comedy is wonderful

Let’s face it: if there is a platform that is really experimenting in Italy on the serial front, it is Prime Video. After having given the public two jewels such as Bang Bang Baby And Prism, The Bad Guy it is the confirmation that it doesn’t matter how inflated a theme is, but how much the way in which that same theme is treated is able to make a difference. We are back in one mafia context – a topic on which Italian seriality and filmography have feasted for at least thirty years – but seasoned this time with a dark humor, a succession of twists and a care of writing and directing that give you chills as far as they are perfect. The plot revolves around a character who deserves a separate spin-off: it is about Nino Scotellaro – a very big one Louis LoCascio capable of finally returning to the light colors of his beginnings -, a Sicilian prosecutor who has dedicated his entire life to the fight against the mafia until the day he is unjustly accused of being part of what he has always fought. From there, alone, disoriented and with nothing left to lose, he decides to score a diabolical plan of revenge able to transform him into the “bad guy” that gives the series its title.

The viewer discovers the details of this settling of accounts as the six episodes written by Ludovica Rampoldi, Davide Serino and Giuseppe G. Stasi proceed, slipping into one twist after another because, on the other hand, if everything went smoothly The Bad Guy it wouldn’t have been the masterpiece it has become. All thanks to an iron script, a very delicate balance between humor and thriller – something very difficult, given that a slightly different weight is enough for one of the parts to bring the structure down – and a quadrille of secondary characters who stand out as much as the protagonist. One for all, the extraordinary Luvi played by Claudia Pandolfi, i.e. Scotellaro’s lawyer and wife who, after failing to defend her husband, thinks she has nothing more to lose but still something to say, giving away scenes such as that of the attack on the dog and the compensation requested by the mother hen from her son scoundrels that should be studied in screenwriting courses.

It remains that the climax of The Bad Guy – who can also count one in the cast Julia Maenza, an actress who may not even deliver her lines because her eyes communicate the frosted range of emotions she conveys, in a state of grace – it’s definitely ascendant, since the viewer doesn’t know until the last moment what will happen to the characters he follows and to whom he has become attached for better or for worse. Prime Video, which produced the series with Indigo Film, demonstrates, in short, how important it is to have a good idea and someone who can implement it. The directors Giuseppe G. Stasi and Giancarlo Fontana have made us understand what Italian inspiration can achieve when it has a platform that gives it confidence, and we really hope that this is just the beginning.