If Supersex has a problem at this point, it’s similar to Rocco’s: It hasn’t quite mastered the animal within. It has the spirit, obviously, the willingness to go there, whether there is Rocco’s mountain of childhood trauma or the show’s many explicit sex scenes. In a variety of ways this is not a forgiving climate for a show revolving in large part around how quickly a man does or doesn’t get an erection or ejaculate, much less for one willing to show so much of the process on screen in such explicit, if not actually graphic, detail. In a world where the filming of The Idol was all but ruled a sex offense by the press and the public, that Supersex even exists is exciting.
But that doesn’t forgive some of its soap-operatic excesses. The plot beats can get predictable: Tell me you couldn’t see Tommaso accusing Rocco and Lucia of sleeping together coming from a mile away, for example. Other times they seem to come and go as the needs of the show require them to: Weren’t the Corsicans after Rocco, and weren’t the cops after Tommaso? Meanwhile, writer-creator Francesca Manieri and director Francesco Carrozzini rely too heavily on the same set-ups for the creation of drama: If you made a drinking game where you took a shot every time the camera lingers on someone’s wide or flat or tear-swollen eyes as they stare at someone else doing something they don’t want them to do, I hope you have a very strong liver.
Still, there remains much to recommend Supersex if you’re interested in its core subject: the power of sex. I’ve never seen a television series this fixated on that one specific area of human experience, in those terms. I think they’re onto something, frankly. Sure, we may not all become world-famous porn stars as a result of those first pubescent stirrings of lust the way Rocco did. But something fundamental in us changes at that point, introducing an entirely new set of priorities into lives previously concerned with, I dunno, paleontology or Sailor Moon. It’s huge, basic driver of human behavior, even if it only becomes the driver of all our behavior for a very few of us. Supersex, and the character of Rocco, respect that power. They both ask how, or if, it can be controlled.
I reviewed the third episode of Supersex for Decider.
Tags: decider, reviews, supersex, TV, TV reviews