Date of airing: September 14, 2020 (Sky Atlantic)
Written by: Furio Andreotti, Giulia Calenda, Ilaria Macchia
Directed by: Maria Sole Tognazzi
”Give us a smile sometimes.”
“Sure, when I have a reason to.”
I'm getting old enough to decry high-concept shows that only focus on the visuals and never on the characters, and I'm starting to appreciate slow storytelling. If you like “cool” TV shows, you are welcome to get crazy about them like all the other Gen Z'ers on the internet. I was one of them back in the days, especially during the heydays of LOST in the mid-2000s, but I need something chill and focused these days, and 90-minute crime fiction episodes seem to be the one genre that delivers. I have my eyes on the long-running German crime show TATORT, but I don't know where to begin – at the start (with episodes from the 1970s), with a specific investigative team in the center, or random episodes as I come across them?
Until I make my decision, PETRA looked like the perfect show to start in the genre, and it turned out that Petra Delicato is the perfect character for me to follow her adventures. She is antisocial just like me, and she might have a bit of a screw loose in her head, just like I do. I mean, when you leave crickets out and about in your house to serve as food for a spider that might be roaming around freely, then, yes, you might be a little crazy. Her new partner in crime-busting Antonio Monte seems to like it, probably because he doesn't know what else to do with his life after his wife's death. And Petra is weird and interesting enough for him to keep him guessing, which might be a new kind of excitement in his life. Naturally, this episode already established a potential will-they/won't-they between the two, since they had enough chemistry to guarantee at least a random fling between episodes.
The first case of the show was nicely written, and with some surprises, which is hard to do, considering I have watched a lot of American crime shows in my life. The thing is, those were 45 minutes long and had to rattle down the twists and turns quickly, while this episode's 80-minute length gave the characters more time to solve the case of the rapes, catch the rapist, and figure out who killed him after he turned up as a corpse halfway into the story. Also, there is time for character depth and conversations that don't have anything to do with the criminal investigation of the week, so that's a huge plus.
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| The new duo of making sure that murderers get caught have a few issues to talk about first. |
