Job par Alexis Lebrun July 25, 2022
A few months following the conclusion of the essential mafia series of recent years, two of its masterminds are back with a new production that once once more reminds us of all the know-how of our Italian neighbors in terms of quality series.
Love triangle
As much to specify it from the start, the plot of Don’t Leave Me is not the lightest. The series indeed keeps us spellbound with an investigation aimed at dismantling a cyber-pedopornographic network of child trafficking on the dark web, where young idle Italians are sold like vulgar merchandise by men who catch them in their nets by pretending to be girls. The first episode also literally begins in the nets of a fisherman, in which the corpse of a child is caught.
A macabre discovery for Daniele (Alessandro Roia from the series Criminal novel), cop from the crime squad who prefers to believe in the thesis of suicide, until the arrival of Elena (Vittoria Puccini, present in the series The process on Netflix), her childhood sweetheart who has become an expert in pedocrime at the minors protection brigade. Convinced that the death of this child is linked to the network she has been investigating for several years, Elena must team up with Daniele despite the weight of their liabilities – she left Venice suddenly twenty years ago – and the presence of her former best friend Giulia (Sarah Felberbaum, seen in The Medici: Masters of Florence), now married to Daniele, with whom she had several children.
Venice is so sad
But this love triangle is not written in rose water. Because we repeat it, Don’t Leave Me is a dark series, which takes us into the sometimes gloomy alleys of a Venice like we never see in fiction. Contrary to the image of Epinal on the “city of lovers” which attracts hordes of tourists, the series indeed films the splendor of the Serenissima with a disturbing darkness.
And visually, the result is stunning: the work done on the photography (and the light!) of the episodes of Don’t Leave Me is remarkable, so much so that it makes us discover the lagoon, its palaces and its famous monuments from a new angle.
The Italian nuggets follow one another
In this, the series is in line with its glorious ancestors, as Gomorrah (CANAL+) et ZeroZeroZero (CHANNEL+). And it’s no coincidence: the two creators of the series (Maddalena Ravagli and Leonardo Fasoli) were among the ubiquitous screenwriters on Gomorrah – including the movie The Immortal – before collaborating once more on ZeroZeroZeroof which Fasoli was the co-creator with director Stefano Sollima.
This year, they also gave birth to the Italian comedy Stuck! (Netflix) and especially to Django, a new CANAL+ Original Creation with Matthias Schoenaerts and Noomi Rapace, adapted from the famous western by Sergio Corbucci, and scheduled for release soon. In short, we are still going to hear regarding these hyperactive writers, and that’s rather good news, isn’t it?
Don’t Leave Me episodes 1 to 8, available July 25 on CANAL+.
To find all the episodes: Click here
