I was not prepared.

No, seriously, listen: I was not prepared.

I reviewed the series finale of the magnificent Suburra: Blood on Rome for Decider.

It’s a hell of a note to end on. Only one episode remains before Suburra arrives at its final destination, and I find myself just as enthralled by these handsome criminals and their emotional misadventures as ever. Almost certainly this will leave me bereaved by the season’s end, as I just can’t imagine all of them making it out alive. I want them to, though—that’s the thing. I want my beautiful boys to live to fight another day. I want them to get along. I want the New Kings of Rome to stand triumphant, that’s how successful this show has been, over the course of its three seasons, in making me care about these dirtbags. And I have a sinking feeling I’m going to be disappointed.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome for Decider.

Watching the two of them egg each other on is like watching a dark mirror image of meetings between Spadino and Aureliano; you want the boys to get along, whereas with Manfredi and Adelaide, all you want them to do is sit down and shut up.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Three for Decider.

The most endearing thing about Suburra is how endearing Aureliano Adami and Spadino Anacleti find each other. Despite starting the series at odds, despite all the twists and turns in their personal and professional relationship since then, you always get the sense that these two dudes fundamentally enjoy each other’s company, even at times when they enjoy very little else. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in this episode that makes that point very clearly. At the big, ill-fated party Spadino throws to celebrate his and Aureliano’s coronation as “the new Kings of Rome,” they, along with their significant others Nadia and Angelica, toast to their success. And right then, Aureliano leans over and kisses Spadino on the arm.

The main thing to notice here is what you don’t notice here. There’s no camera cut to emphasize the gesture. There’s no reaction shot focusing on any of the characters, showing that they’re taken aback or smiling warmly at the kiss or anything like that. In the absence of that kind of basic filmmaking infrastructure it feels safe to assume that the kiss was improvised on the spot by actor Alessandro Borghi and then kept in the episode because the filmmakers liked the look of it.

But that absence of emphasis says so much about the closeness between these two guys. Aureliano can kiss Spadino on the arm and the party proceeds as normal (for now anyway) because yeah, of course these two guys love each other and would display that without it being a big deal. And it’s in moments like those that I love them too.

I reviewed the third episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 3 for Decider.

I think the thing that surprises me most about this episode is the rapidity with which Spadino and Aureliano are moving their way through Rome’s criminal power structure. We barely meet the truculent Titto before he’s opening fire on the duo’s enemies on their behalf. If the rest of the season simply frogmarches our heroes to the top of the power structure—well, I’ll be pretty excited about it, the way the episodes of Boardwalk Empire or Fargo in which someone comes out indisputably on top always excited me.

I reviewed episode 2 of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 3 for Decider.

Of course, this is Suburra, so the other star of the show is just the way the show itself looks. Competing color schemes, none of which are the typical prestige-TV palette of slate-blue or puke-green, come with each character: Aureliano is blue like the sea of his oceanside headquarters, Spadino is gold like the overly opulent decorations in his home, Nascari is crimson like a cardinal’s robes, and Cinaglia tends to be shot in harsh lighting as if he might wilt under the bright lights. The show doesn’t beat you over the head with any of this, but it’s there, and it has an impact.

I reviewed Suburra: Blood on Rome‘s third and final season premiere for Decider, where I’ll be covering the entire season.

Grappling with the big questions?

Try The Young Pope and The New Pope (HBOGo/HBO NOW)

Here’s the deal: Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s outrageously bold pair of series take on the iconography and ideology of the Catholic Church with a sly sense of humor and a knack for surreal visuals. The Young Pope stars Jude Law as Lenny Belardo, an “incredibly handsome” American elected Pope by his brother cardinals, whom he comes to rule with an iron fist. The New Pope, which is simply The Young Pope Season 2 by a new name, introduces John Malkovich as Belardo’s successor, the dandyish Englishman Sir John Brannox. Fully loaded with eye candy, both shows grapple head-on with the power of faith and the mystery of love—or is that the other way around? Your jaw will drop even as your mind expands.

I wrote a guide to 10 off-the-beaten-path shows to binge-watch during quarantine for Decider. This one was a long time in the making—I hope you dig it!

The dumb handsome dirtbags. The heart-on-sleeve performances by the actors (Alessandro Borghi, Giacomo Ferrara, and Eduardo Valdarnini) who play them. The action, romance, tragedy, and extravagant cynicism. The lush lighting, lavish scenery, aching score, and sharp cinematography. The use of betrayal, backstabbing, and devastating shocks—crime-fiction staples all, for obvious reasons—as ways to explore their polar opposites: love, loyalty, and the natural human desire to be able to depend on others, and to be depended on in turn. Everything good about Suburra: Blood on Rome in general is good about its second season finale in particular.

Indeed, the rapid clip at which gobsmacking, heartwarming, and heartbreaking developments take place in “Tell Me the Truth” make this that rarest of beasts: a Netflix season that should have been longer.

I reviewed the season finale of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Two for Decider.

The dumb handsome dirtbags. The heart-on-sleeve performances by the actors (Alessandro Borghi, Giacomo Ferrara, and Eduardo Valdarnini) who play them. The action, romance, tragedy, and extravagant cynicism. The lush lighting, lavish scenery, aching score, and sharp cinematography. The use of betrayal, backstabbing, and devastating shocks—crime-fiction staples all, for obvious reasons—as ways to explore their polar opposites: love, loyalty, and the natural human desire to be able to depend on others, and to be depended on in turn. Everything good about Suburra: Blood on Rome in general is good about its second season finale in particular.

I reviewed the season finale of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

In one of the most momentous episodes of Suburra Season 2 to date—an episode in which one member of our core trio is crowned king and another is tortured till he’s a broken man—a little detail in the first minute or two after the opening title sticks with me. It’s morning, and Aureliano and Nadia have slept off their narrow escape of the previous night. She wakes up first, and pads over to the couch where he’s sleeping, seemingly just to get a look at him. She turns and walks toward the window, not realizing that for a brief moment he’s opened his eyes, just to get a look at her too. Storied television romances have been built on much less subtle and solid a foundation.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Two for Decider.

In one of the most momentous episodes of Suburra Season 2 to date—an episode in which one member of our core trio is crowned king and another is tortured till he’s a broken man—a little detail in the first minute or two after the opening title sticks with me. It’s morning, and Aureliano and Nadia have slept off their narrow escape of the previous night. She wakes up first, and pads over to the couch where he’s sleeping, seemingly just to get a look at him. She turns and walks toward the window, not realizing that for a brief moment he’s opened his eyes, just to get a look at her too. Storied television romances have been built on much less subtle and solid a foundation.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

Famous last words, Aureliano.

I reviewed the sixth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s Suburra!

When you kiss but feel bad cuz you just killed her dad, that’s Suburra!

When you free / several refugees / just so there can be / unrest in the streets, that’s Suburra!

When you roast dudes like ribs then go shopping for cribs, that’s Suburra!

Yes, romance, parenthood, racism, and the smell of burning flesh are all in the air in this episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome. Named “The Crib” after the hilariously gaudy baby furniture Spadino and Aureliano buy for the former’s forthcoming bundle of joy—at the end of a long night during which Aureliano burned the abusive cousins of his new right-hand woman Nadia to death and then dumped the corpses in front of the heads of all the Ostia crime families as a warning never to do business with “gypsies” again—this one is jam packed with everything that makes this show so goddamn good to watch.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s Suburra!

When you kiss but feel bad cuz you just killed her dad, that’s Suburra!

When you free / several refugees / just so there can be / unrest in the streets, that’s Suburra!

When you roast dudes like ribs then go shopping for cribs, that’s Suburra!

I had a little fun reviewing episode five of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

The dream of the ’90s is alive in Suburra. That’s one of the many, many, many things I find endearing about this show, I realize now. Sexy, cool-looking dirtbags cruising around in a late-night city to late-night electronic music, like if The Sopranos starred the cast of Trainspotting. It’s beautiful, man, just beautiful. If I could ensure I wouldn’t get shot, or wouldn’t have to sit someplace crying because someone I love got shot, I’d move there in a heartbeat.

Speaking of the ’90s, a decade during which I did a lot of crying, men cry a lot on Suburra, too. Maybe more than in any other show I’ve watched, when you factor in the small number of episodes to date and the short running time of each? That’s another attractive element. Again, I always call this show “emotional,” and this is why.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

The dream of the ’90s is alive in Suburra. That’s one of the many, many, many things I find endearing about this show, I realize now. Sexy, cool-looking dirtbags cruising around in a late-night city to late-night electronic music, like if The Sopranosstarred the cast of Trainspotting. It’s beautiful, man, just beautiful. If I could ensure I wouldn’t get shot, or wouldn’t have to sit someplace crying because someone I love got shot, I’d move there in a heartbeat.

Speaking of the ’90s, a decade during which I did a lot of crying, men cry a lot on Suburra, too. Maybe more than in any other show I’ve watched, when you factor in the small number of episodes to date and the short running time of each? That’s another attractive element. Again, I always call this show “emotional,” and this is why.

I reviewed episode four of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider.

How confident in its storytelling is Suburra: Blood on Rome at this point? Confident enough to introduce purple as a signature color for Livia Adami during the episode in which she dies, then paint the whole world with it as her brother Aurelio gives her a burial at sea.

Confident enough to reunite its three main characters early in its second season’s run for the express purpose of doing something long overdue: teaming up to kill Samurai, the taciturn Roman crimelord who’s been screwing with all their lives like a capricious deity from the start. Not just planning to do it, either—deciding to do it, tonight.

And confident enough that even though it seems unlikely that our three amigos would succeed in taking out the show’s number-one villain in episode three of Season Two, the death of Livia in the previous episode (at Samurai’s hands, no less) is enough to make us in the audience believe that anything could happen. In other words, it’s exactly as confident as it deserves to be.

I reviewed the third episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

How confident in its storytelling is Suburra: Blood on Rome at this point?…Exactly as confident as it deserves to be.

I reviewed episode three of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Two for Decider.

One of Suburra‘s many strengths, and the one most responsible for making it such a strangely endearing show regarding its dirtbag characters —other than the fact that they’re all played by incredibly beautiful actors I mean— is how emotional it is. I think I’ve used that word every time I’ve discussed the show at any length, but it’s the only one that fits. There are so many shots of so many people quietly crying about losing other people while that lush, mournful theme hits in the background that you can’t help but feel something like what they’re feeling, you know? It’s the contrast between everyone’s affected tough-guy personas and their tendency to melt into sobbing puddles when they’re rejected or bereaved that makes you care.

“Consequences” (Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2, Episode 2) counts on this. It drills right down into one of the series’ closest and most volatile relationships, and then ends it.

I reviewed the second episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

Judging from this fast-paced premiere—which despite a three-month gap since the Season One finale seems to pick up right where we left off—Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 will offer all the pleasures of its initial outing.

The moody and often beautiful score by Canadian electronic musician Loscil is there, lending grandeur and pathos to the high points of the squalid proceedings. Cinematographer Arnaldo Catinari and director Andrea Molaioli serve up one stunning bit of portraiture after another, and collaborate on a color scheme unlike anything else you’ll see in the genre, with bright blues and lurid greens you won’t see either in the ice-blue/sickly-green palette of the usual prestige-adjacent crime shows or the bisexual lighting that’s dominated tales of slick and attractive people who kill other people for living on the big screen for several years. The plot is a tangled web of hastily formed alliances that keeps you alert but remains easy to follow so long as you pay attention, despite the language barrier. There’s a theme of generational and familial conflict that rings true whether or not your family is involved in organized crime.

And at the heart of it all is a suite of performances from skilled and (this must be stressed) extremely attractive actors. Particularly the core trio of newly minted local Roman crime boss Aureliano Adami (Alessandro Borghi), his Sinti Roma opposite number Alberto “Spadino” Anacleti (Giacomo Ferrara), and drug dealer turned double agent turned cop Gabriele “Lele” Marchilli (Eduardo Valdarnini). Whether killing each other’s fathers to giving each other mudbaths, these three crazy kids are impossible to take your eyes off of. Why would you want to, anyway?

I reviewed the premiere of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

(NOTE: These review summaries will remain brief while I play catch-up with links. I guess you’ll just have to read the reviews!)