Streaming series review - The Sea Beyond

The Sea Beyond **1/2 (out of 5) This Italian TV drama is mostly set in a detention facility for teens who’ve run afoul of the law. Inmates include both genders, but they’re kept mostly in separate areas. It plays out as something of an under-18 soap opera, with a few romances and multiple arenas of violence among a large ensemble cast of principals.

The course of their current incarceration experiences is intercut with flashbacks to the preceding events that landed them in the pokey. Most of their criminal behavior seems to result from abusive fathers and father-figures, the multi-generational grudges between rival crime families, and the temptations of drugs and thievery for easy money. And respect from their peers and some elders. The primary focus is on two young men – rich kid, Filippo (Nicolas Maupas) who accidentally caused the death of a friend with an influential father; and Carmine Massimiliano Caiano), who struggled to free himself from the criminal enterprise of his family, but killed the son of a rival capo who was assaulting his girlfriend. That seeming justification means nothing in keeping him out of jail, or safe from reprisals.

Throughout the first season of 12 hourlong episodes, relationships, plots and allegiances swirl among a couple of dozen cast members we get to know. It’s a series that’s ripe for bingeing, since seeing them back-to-back may be valuable in keeping all the plotlines straight – especially for those of us who need the English subtitles. Like most prison dramas, there are inmates with more control over the institution and inmates than they should, and a full array of addictions, pathologies and aspirations. Viewers’ sympathies will also shift in some cases.

If this leads you to expect the sexiness and violence of shows like Orange is the New Black, scale them down to more PG-13 levels. There are only a few brief displays of nudity; just the still-clad beginnings of any sexual encounters, and much of the violence occurs off-camera or with minimal depiction of the acts and results. By comparison, this would rank as an Orange is the New Bland – which will fall short for thrill-seekers, while appealing to a larger audience of those turned off by graphic displays of either variety.

Strong performances abound among the inmates and several others running the facility or related to the kids. No one skimped on production values either. The sets and costumes are worthy of feature films, including enough scenes in the mean streets and at some lovely seaside locations in and around Naples to keep the show from feeling claustrophobic.

Season One ends without major cliffhangers, though most of the romance and revenge plotlines for the array of characters remain unresolved. Not to worry. Seasons Two and Three have already run in Italy, and are scheduled for streaming release on MHzChoice within the coming months.

(The Sea Beyond: Season One, mostly in Italian with subtitles, streams on MHzChoice as of 10/17/23)