Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2 Review: Ficarra and Picone, Still Stuck Between The Mafia and Love
Cast: Salvo Ficarra, Valentino Picone, Tony Sperandeo, Leo Gullotta, Anna Favella, Marianna Di Martino
Creator: Ficarra and Picone
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2 is a series produced by Tramp Limited Srl and distributed by Netflix, conceived and directed by Valentino Picone and Salvatore Ficarra. Season 2 episodes have been available on the platform since March 2, 2023. The arrival of Ficarra and Picone in the world of TV series thrilled us. We had written it in the review of Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery, an original product of the Netflix team, and we had reconfirmed it in our invitation to restart Italian seriality precisely from the title of the Sicilian comedians, discovering instead with their second season that perhaps we were wrong, even if we have to admit it too reluctantly. Despite Stuck, returning to the Netflix catalog in March 2023 was thought of as a show to be released in two moments, thus not prolonging the narrative too much, and therefore being created immediately as a two-season product, this second departure on the streaming window seems almost disconnected from the previous one.
Simplified and reduced to only sketches on which the actors concentrated more, making the atmosphere of the story confusing from the first episode, seeming more cobbled together than how it was left. Stuck, the Netflix series that marked the debut of Ficarra and Picone in seriality, returns with the second and final season that tells us how the story of misunderstandings ends that led Salvo and Valentino, two naive appliance technicians, to contact the Mafia and the feared (and highly sought after) boss Padre Santissimo. The story arrives on our devices shortly after a famous fugitive, Matteo Messina Denaro, was captured. Coincidences, sure. But, as we tell you in the review of Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2, a series that blends pure comedy with a crime plot, there is an inspiration towards legality and a sincere sense of anti-mafia commitment which, in the end, also manages to move.
Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2 Review: The Story Plot
It was on a road in Sicily that we left Salvo and Valentino in the finale of Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery and it is more or less in the same situation that we find them again. The attack is less convincing than it was for the first season, having to enter the story in media res for script reasons, however not allowing the viewer to easily frame the previous context from which, then, the series wanted to restart. A dragging the audience on the sly if one considers the curiosity that the initial episodes of the debut had managed to arouse. This time they don’t even try to tease the viewer with fun, not inserting any effective elements like those of the first season: the deconstruction of seriality, Salvo’s passion for the crime shows The Touch of the Killer, how the protagonists risk to be accused of murder.
With Framed! In a Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2, the jokes follow one another all the same, taking inspiration from the clichés about the Mafia, about a Sicily where everyone takes it easy, where there is always delay, and where you can go unpunished if you are engaged to one of the bosses of the police. Writing a narrative that proceeds a little tired as it wasn’t at all in its debut, and which also conditions a comedy that is, therefore, more artificial and phoned by the characters. Especially from its main players. This is a pity, both for how we were able to appreciate them precisely with Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery and after the exquisite performance under the direction of Roberto Andò in the film Strangeness. A saw them delegated slightly where one more leap was expected, for a final that had to not only be at the level of the season released last year but even surpass it.
Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2 Review and Analysis
At first glance, this Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2 seems like a simple product, in fact, the second part of the story that began in the first season: it looks like a comedy series, the natural continuation of the duo’s successes in the cinema, a product capable of enhancing their natural sympathy and comedic times. But there is much more: there is the rather successful attempt to combine comedy with a crime plot that manages, in its way, to keep the viewer on their toes, despite (and this is a small, venial, defect of the series) tends to reiterate the same narrative schemes and the same situations a little too often. But, despite this, the yellow plot works, also thanks to the actors, all biased and convincing.
But there’s more to The Fitted 2, and we find out as we get closer to the end of the series. Indeed, in the launch press conference, Ficarra and Picone declared that they would not have put the mafia in their series if they did not have something new to say on the subject. It’s the idea of not forgetting what the Mafia is and what it was able to do. Above all, because the new generations have not experienced massacres. In season 1, the most striking was the speech, not at all comical but terribly serious, by Father Santissimo, who said “we mafiosi must keep our heads down because in the meantime people forget”. In this second season, in a scene where you can see the display case with the remains of Falcone’s escort car, the prosecutor Nicolosi (a surprising Leo Gullotta) pronounces a few words from Paolo Borsellino, and the emotion is really strong. “We attribute to the mafiosi an intelligence that they don’t have” said Valentino Picone at the presentation of the series. And Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery succeeds in what is perhaps the best way to fight the Mafiosi (without underestimating them), that is, to ridicule them. This is what Pif did in about him The Mafia Only Kills in the Summer.
But in Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery the metanarrative discourse on the language of the TV series is also very interesting. First of all, the game insisted on cliffhangers, on the precise and insistent choice of leaving the viewer hanging to entice him to see the next episode. But the smartest and most amusing game is the mockery of American series (series which, in today’s world, are cult for some and not even noteworthy for others). After the Inspector Jackson catchphrase and A Touch of Cloth from season 1, now the prequel craze is being teased: so here is The Look of The Killer, with the protagonist rejuvenated to hilarious effect. Ficarra and Picone really enjoyed “ruining” this series, with deliberately bad shots, sloppy photography (but the photography of the series is by the great Daniele Ciprì), and deliberately out-of-sync dubbing. Everyone enjoyed it, including the voice actors. And we had a lot of fun too.
Of the first impressions that we hope will be denied in the continuation of the series, in particular as regards the intertwining of the different narrative lines of each character. Wishing the show finds its gloss that also justifies the chaos with which the first episodes of Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2 starts in fourth place. Episodes that need to be directed again after this preliminary heeling, to understand whether the series will be put back on the right track and lead to the satisfactory solution of the Chinese box in which the protagonists have become trapped. Because Ficarra and Picone can do more on the small screen.
Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2 Review: The Last Words
As we tell you in the review of Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery Season 2, a series that blends pure comedy with a crime plot, there is an inspiration towards legality and a sincere sense of anti-mafia commitment which, in the end, also manages to move. The first season of Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery convinced us right away. This time, however, the debut of the second act does not leave us satisfied; more confusing and less incisive than the one with which the previous round of episodes had started. A narration and a comedy that go hand in hand, not being effective in either case, hoping that the ending of the Netflix show will be able to convince more.
