Les rescapés de l'Arianna

I really don't understand why this TV series is so low rated!! I really enjoyed it from the beginning to the end!

The Arianna , a large sailing vessel, is about to make a journey from Genoa to the Canary Islands but, due to a storm, after a few days it disappears from the radar. After a year adrift, the wreck is found. However, not all the passengers on board return home, and the ones that come back are deeply changed and all linked by a terrible secret .

At the beginning there are a lot of questions unanswered but as the story evolves we learn little by little what happened and we fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle.

There is definitely going to be a season 2 as the ending is even more puzzling!

Following the footsteps of Lost and other examples of the "mysterious disappearance narrated in flashbacks" genre, this started off bearable, and even interesting in some aspects. There was good potential to play around with as some of the characters were promising.

However, even when the plot thickened, the show lacked humor (of any kind, even dark) and a certain feeling of hope. It got too depressive for my taste.

Still, I was on board for the final night of two consequents episodes to air on RAI1. As the first one ended, I was puzzled because there were too many loose ends to be wrapped up in that remaining hour.

It was only by the end that I figured out the show was supposed to have a second season, one set in an island or something.

Too little, too late.

I don't know if they still are working on that second season, but the dynamics of the story demanded the remainded of the mysteries to be solved in a single season. The premise already ran out of gas. I think you gotta be really hopeless with your choices to sit down for 12 more hours of this going on, with almost no carrot left dangling before your head.

To be honest, I am slightly appalled. Everything is pretended here: A mystery series that ultimately leaves everything open or, in a chaotic script, doesn't know where it stands at the end. The only mystery here is how such a script could be written. People who remain silent about what happened on the ship - and at the end viewers who know (almost) just as little. What is one supposed to do with that? Add to that the annoying music that sometimes almost drowns out even the dialogue, the permanent evocation of the psychological consequences of the disaster and the absolute necessity of silence about what had happened on board - and that actually happens over and over again in each of the individual episodes. Who doesn't find this annoying in the long run? 12 episodes that could have found room in a maximum of three, because everything keeps repeating and repeating and repeating ... No, I'm really annoyed.

It promised to be the italian (well, the french-italian) lost or the 100, but as always is just the usual boomer-friendly fiction from RAI.

Although the actor try very hard to be believable, as always most of them are insufferable snobs or drama queens, to the point of being funny or just hysterical,unemotionless whining. This is a typical clichè in italian screenwriting, especially with women.

The amount of filler time is amazing, mostly "emotional scenes" with the usual sad violin or piano while doing random stuff. In episode 1 one fo the survivors enters the room and starts throwing away her stuff. No explanation, no hint from acting, just sad music. On episode 2, a father watches the videos from her daughter during his time away, and OF COURSE we must see all the videos, repeating the same stuff.

Other filler times is the confrontation between survivors and their families or friends. They never really say anything, they only speak In metaphors or great cliches about life. Any conflict is either solved with slaps, insistence or denial of anyone's feeling. Everybody is too emotionally unavailable, damaged or impaired to understand anybody. As always with italian "drama". But hey, there is fun for the youngsters too, the teens make their own teen love drama/school subplot.

"I don't know what you have suffered during your journey, and honestly I don't care." This phrase from ep. 2 is a perfect summary of the feeling this show.

Were it 4 or 6 episodes, I could have thought of watching it for the sake of the mystery, but I already watched Lost, I've not 12 hours to sacrifice on this.