La mafia tue seulement l'été

This was the best tv series I've watched I've never loved a cast more. I felt invested in every one of them. It's heartbreaking and joyful and jarring all at the same time.

We have been watching this during the past month, and we both agree it's been our most enjoyable nightly binge since we watched the Swedish Wallendar series. Of course, everyone has different interests and tastes, and this is subtitled but, especially because we like Sicily so much, this has captured our attention. Really well conceived and written, humanized, both funny and serious, merging Sicily's modern history with fictionalized individual experiences living there, well acted even by the children, full of entertaining empathetic characters, devotedly anti-Mafia, inspiring..

When you have a great story and quality actors you can appeal to any audience. Mafia only kills in summer delivers on all points. This is a really well done production that weaves a Sicilian family's day-to-day life with Italian socio-political problems in the late 70's and 80's. The setting is beautiful. The actors are compelling and believable. And the story all hangs together with a blend of comedy and drama in each episode. My only regrets when watching the series were a) I don't speak Italian, b) my inability during the pandemic to get on a plane destined for Palermo, and c) the series only lasting 2 seasons.

Discovered by accident while browsing the TV Programme. The story immediately struck me as something worth watching. But then I discovered a true beauty of this TV series - the stories, the dialogues, characters, cast, actors, camera. The episode with a burnt puppet and the owner of a bookstore is for me the highlight of the show. Not for binge watching - the stories are emotion packed and you should have time to recover before skipping to the next episode.

'Mafia Only Kills in Summer' tells the story of Sicily circa 1980 by interweaving the lives of a prototypical Italian family with the real leaders of the Cosa Nostra and the heroes they killed. It's alternately charming, funny, and full of righteous anger; and it gets the balance just right, showing how the Mafia permeated through civil society.. While aspects of the humour are somewhat stereotypical, they go down well anyway because of the sheer heart of the portrayals. A favourite moment of mine is when the central protagonist, a boy on the brink of adolescence and obsessed with the Mafia, is taken by his parents to a psychologist, and in the Rorsach blots he is presented with sees alternately breasts, and (Prime Minister) Andreotti meeting with a Mafioso. Two series have been made to date; it's creator wants take the story through to the 1990s, and I hope he gets the chance to do so.