My Brilliant Friend.

From the pen of  Elena Ferranti  This adapted epic TV series  with three seasons of eight episodes each running almost an hour this series is a marathon, but one worth running.
It follows in great detail the friendship of two young girls growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in Naples just after the second world war. Their mean meagre and sometimes brutal upbringing in which children were often treated as burdens produced by unwanted sex by men who considered their wives as property and servants, is the harsh deprived backdrop that these two young girls were brought up in and were drawn together for protection as much as anything else. As girls their future was mapped out for them at an early age, to follow their mothers miserable lives as producers of offspring and to stand by as their philandering  husbands. Any aspirations for self betterment or education of any kind was scorned on and stamped out by parents and society as whole. The only way forward being the continuation of their existing lives. The two protagonists, Lila a firebrand from the start and Elena the more introverted of the two. Both outstanding scholars in elementary school. It’s only Elena who is eventually allowed to capitalize on her intellect through an understanding father. Much to her mothers disgust. Lila equally bright has her ambitions crushed from the start by her brutish family. Her only way forwards is through a possible eventual union with the gangs and loan sharks that control m much of the ‘neighborhood’ in which they both live. This is a character driven drama, there are no ‘stars’ as such and most of the characters are memorable, their performances stark and riveting. The production is top rate the attention to detail mind boggling the locales are authentic. This is an entirely Italian enterprise and it shows, in the best sense. The two lead protagonists, Lila and Elena are played by three sets of actors following their childhood lives into adulthood.  
Elisa Del Genio plays the adult Elena  Ludovica Nasti plays the adult Lila.   An enormous supporting cast turns this series into an engrossing adventure.   
468 stars.  HBO