Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Baby’ On Netflix, A Drama About Teens Who Get Pulled Into Rome’s Seedy Underbelly

We just can’t get enough of teens-in-trouble stories, can we? And Netflix seems to be finding them from all over the world. Now we have the Italian drama Baby, which is advertised as a “coming-of-age” story but from what we’re hearing will be a whole lot more. Read on…

BABY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Blank screen, then a voice over that says, “If you’re 16 and live in Rome’s most beautiful neighborhood, you’re lucky.” Then we see buildings in Parioli, the city’s most exclusive area.

The Gist: Chiara (Alice Pagani) talks about living a double life, about wanting to get out of the Parioli fishbowl. In the first scene, we see the high school student staring worriedly at the ceiling as her classmate Nico (Lorenzo Zurzolo) sleeps n ext to her. Sleeping with Nico, one of the most popular kids in school, is a no-no because he has a girlfriend. So there she’s already living a secret life. And she pretty much says almost nothing to her mother, Simonetta (Isabella Ferrari); Simonetta and Chiara’s father have recently gotten separated.

Despite her overachieving life in high school — popular, good grades, on the track team — she’s intrigued by her mysterious classmate Ludovica (Benedetta Porcaroli), who has been shunned by classmates due to rumors of a sex video she’s in that has circulated throughout the school. They meet when Chiara hears Ludovica crying in the girls’ room, and finds out she’s practicing to get out of a math test. Ludo helps Chiara out by expertly forging Simonetta’s signature on a permission slip for Chiara to study abroad in New York.

In the meantime, a new student named Damiano (Riccardo Mandolini), a middle-class kid who ends up in the school after he moves in with his dad, who is a powerful government-official, after his mother dies. He hates the school but seems to find a kindred spirit in Chiara. She’s so intrigued by him that she Instagram stalks him to find out more about his old life.

All three of them attend a party at a classmate’s house, and all are having a rotten time, but when Ludo and Chiara get together, they have some sexy fun… until someone plays the sex video that Ludo shot. When Chiara goes after her, she runs into Damiano, whose late mother’s scooter was stolen. They connect, too, but she goes with Ludo when she invites her to a club where she knows the owner Saviero (Paolo Calabresi). When the two of them are dancing, the owner talks to his business partner about how their clients will love Chiara and Ludo. Um… for what?

Our Take: Listen, how many times in the last year have we seen privileged  high schoolers either participating in or being lured into a world of drugs and sex? For shows of this genre to work these days, there has to be a driving force there. With Elite, it’s a political fight and a murder, and with Baby, it’s the frustration of being in the fishbowl of the moneyed class.

We can tell from the first scene that Chiara isn’t your typical kid living in the lap of luxury. She doesn’t take too much advantage of her social status, and just wants to experience life in an authentic way, and that comes through in Pagani’s performance; she’s down-to-earth and shows why and how she’s attracted to people outside the school’s norms, like Ludovica and Damiano.

Porcaroli is dynamic as Ludovica, who has a mother who dates young men who sponge off her and who thinks parenting is taking Instagram pics of their matching toenail polish. We can tell her life has been rough, but she seems to be managing… until she doesn’t. And her reaction to the sex video being played at the party is the best scene in the first episode.

One thing, though: At the end of the first episode, we’re just thinking that Baby is going to be about Chiara being drawn into Rome’s nightlife, torn between Ludo and Damiano. But there have been calls for Netflix to pull the show because it’s said to be based on a real-life teen prostitution case. That feels like the direction the show is going in, which will give it a bit more of a drive than the first episode showed. But at what cost?

Sex and Skin: After that first scene, there isn’t any sex or skin in the first episode, though we think it’ll come later.

Parting Shot: As the girls dance over a remake of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by the Chromatics, Chiara’s voice over says, “The best thing about having a secret life is that you never know what’s in store for you.” Ooooh, foreshadowing!

Sleeper Star: Mandolini will be interesting to watch as Damiano. How does he fit into the world that Chiara and Ludovica is getting themselves into?

Most Pilot-y Line: Ludovici’s mother’s boyfriend is such a sponge that he tries to pay for the fancy dinner he’s at with Ludo and her mother and his credit card is rejected.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Well-acted and well-written, Baby should be an entertaining drama if you’re OK with the racy subject matter.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.