The Good Apprentice

This is an enjoyable italian love/crime TV series, with no violence and some interesting mistery stories. Lino Guanciale is great playing the harassing politically non correct boss of Mastronardi, the "allieva". American viewers will find disturbing the fact a boss/professor is hitting on students, but the show is light and noone is truly victimized here. There is space for improvement in Mastronardi acting, overall the cast is doing a average job but the show is very entertaining. The book writer Gazzola is consulting, so there are some plot twists that do not appear in the books, which is good if you have already read them. Do not expect brilliance, but it is good for a pleasant evening.

What I noticed first about this series was how good it made me feel. This is appropriately billled as a "romantic comedy." The gentle comedy comes out in the endearing slips and foibles of the characters, but the it takes seriously the life decisions a group of young adults is making. I watched it with grandchildren who were riveted and it sparked a lot of really interesting discussion (and practice kissing on balloons). Is this a career for which I'm suited? What is the place of love in one's life? How do you tell the difference between attraction and enduring love? How do I know what/whom to trust? It's a very loving series for the most part and the loving made it easy to forgive any imperfections. I don't find many. There's plenty of romantic love here which is given time to evolve, but it's not just about romantic love. Friends, colleagues and siblings help each other. There is a loving and wise red-headed grandmother. She is always cooking. This is an Italian film, after all, with good wine and they eat real bread. Yes, Claudio Conforti might be charged with sexual harassment in the US. I for one was glad for a few hours to let the men be men and women be women and Vive la difference. I would not feel that way if it didn't become obvious early on that Claudio is about more than being a "serial seducer." I'm watching this for the third time for the technical things I learn. The pace gives the story time to breathe. American films, by contrast often seem in a rush. The continuity is good. The brief camp vignettes that largely represent Alice's nightmares and imaginings are brief and genuinely funny. There are a lot of strands I thought were seamlessy woven; I didn't find this confusing; it seemed ,more rich to me. There weren't many dropped stitches. I look forward to Season Three.

While not nearly the same macabre caliber of the hit Italian show, Thou Shall Not Kill, this is a good series. The lead character is charming and funny. There are some light-hearted moments of romance on the show that contrast with the darker elements of Alice's job as a medical student/medical examiner. All crime shows are unrealistic in that one or two people do not solve crimes and certainly not a medical student in her final year of school. The biggest gripes I have are how dumb and unprofessional the main female character is and how sexist and rude her macho Italian male boss is. There is a TON of old-fashioned sexism in Italian culture, especially in the workplace against women. Alice is either a lovesick teenager or a bumbling idiot making mistakes even a high school kid wouldn't do in her medical lab. Her boss lashes out at her all the time and treats her like a child. If you can look past all of this, underneath is an average soap opera style crime drama with very few stories steeped in reality. For a PBS imported show, there are certainly better ones to watch over this one.