¡Acorralados!

The Italian comic duo of, Ficarra e Picone, take on the Mafia and everything that is so wrong with the Italian system, by poking fun at it and entertaining us along the way. They play bumbling Electronic Technicians who stumble upon a corpse, and from there their whole world falls apart, but in a comical way.

What Ficarra and Picone manage to do is reveal how insane and corrupt their country is. From the new-look Mafia who have to make ends meet by doing legit jobs, to the Church and their financial dealings (the monastery who don't hand out receipts for their purchased cookies), to lame news stories from the desperate media, and even throwing in cheesy TV Police thrillers that have burnt away our brain cells. The duo have fun and go to town on it, including the gender difference when committing infidelity!

It's a Sicilian farce, that only Sicilians will understand. But if you go in with the knowledge that all is not right in the sun burnt island, then you will enjoy the silly ride Ficarra and Picone have in store for you.

We watched all 6 episodes in one sitting and, even with the not quite good dubbing, were laughing out loud the whole time, not many shows these days can make a person do that. It's not meant to be taken seriously, ok.

Usually I'm not a fan of our local productions, as (nowadays) they are a mix of bad and poorly executed. This... this I had to recommend to everyone I know. Ficarra and Picone are often fun, and here they shine! Their characters are lovable stereotypes, with the supporting cast also having good characters, and I connected a bit with Salvatore when, early on, he talked the ears off his friend by telling him about the latest episode of his favorite show, just to get complaints about having gone on for the whole morning, and that was just the first 5 minutes! I have a bit of that habit too. Anyway they get into stupid amounts of trouble, all easily avoided by having common sense, and meet characters that can only be described as "picturesque" like Useless Thing and the rest of the local mafia, or the journalist. All very humorous. Speaking of humor, I like to watch things with subtitles enabled, and can say that here (at least the subtitles) the jokes and humor is translated well enough into English, and that's important! All in all I enjoyed both seasons, plenty of laughs and all of that with a decent plot to keep it together. It's not Coliandro, but hey, not everything can be that good.

Is it stupid? Yes. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Is it far fetched? Yes. Will you laugh your butt off? Yes!!! A totally hilarious romp that will distract you from what's going on in the rest of the world.

This is a story about a couple of TV Repairmen, somewhat reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy, who accidentally get mixed up with the local mob and wind up smack in the middle between the mob family and the coppers. It's never not a comedy though, but still takes the plot seriously enough. So, no one turns into a horse (a L&H reference). However, there were a couple times I thought they went a bit too silly.

I'm not Italian, have never been to Sicily, and do not speak the language. I understood the jokes just fine, so not sure what the other reviewers were talking about.

The subs seemed accurate as the words matched the character's tone and body language.

Overall, this was an enjoyable watch. Now that I know this is a comedy duo, I plan to watch more of their work. A well-deserved 7* is my rating.