‘Suburra: Blood on Rome’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: The Boys Are Back in Town

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that Suburra: Blood on Rome is no longer starting with a cold open on a plot point from near the end of the episode’s action, then flashing back to show us how we got there. It’s not the structure I miss, you understand, though it was an good way to keep the audience guessing about how we were gonna get from Point A to Point B. No, mostly I just miss the explanatory title card at the start of the main storyline that takes place the previous day, or as the show put it, “IL GIORNO PRIMA.” Hollering those three little words in my best-worst Long Island Irish version of an Italian accent helped make this already excellent and hugely enjoyable Roman crime saga just a bit more enjoyable, at least for me and the person on the couch next to me. Ah well, the eternal city and its infernal denizens will no doubt get by just fine with out it.

So will the show. Judging from this fast-paced premiere—which despite a three-month gap since the Season One finale seems to pick up right where we left off—Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 will offer all the pleasures of its initial outing.

The moody and often beautiful score by Canadian electronic musician Loscil is there, lending grandeur and pathos to the high points of the squalid proceedings. Cinematographer Arnaldo Catinari and director Andrea Molaioli serve up one stunning bit of portraiture after another, and collaborate on a color scheme unlike anything else you’ll see in the genre, with bright blues and lurid greens you won’t see either in the ice-blue/sickly-green palette of the usual prestige-adjacent crime shows or the bisexual lighting that’s dominated tales of slick and attractive people who kill other people for living on the big screen for several years. The plot is a tangled web of hastily formed alliances that keeps you alert but remains easy to follow so long as you pay attention, despite the language barrier. There’s a theme of generational and familial conflict that rings true whether or not your family is involved in organized crime.

And at the heart of it all is a suite of performances from skilled and (this must be stressed) extremely attractive actors. Particularly the core trio of newly minted local Roman crime boss Aureliano Adami (Alessandro Borghi), his Sinti Roma opposite number Alberto “Spadino” Anacleti (Giacomo Ferrara), and drug dealer turned double agent turned cop Gabriele “Lele” Marchilli (Eduardo Valdarnini). Whether killing each other’s fathers to giving each other mudbaths, these three crazy kids are impossible to take your eyes off of. Why would you want to, anyway?

So here’s the deal, which again is surprisingly easy to piece together despite the sheer number of moving parts. (Just don’t rely on the two-minute Season One recap that Netflix has tacked on to the start of the episode, a jumble of information that emphasizes rapid-fire editing over such vital plot points as how the three musketeers met by blackmailing a priest at a coke orgy, or how Aureliano and his sister Livia had a falling out when she murdered his girlfriend for being a black sex worker.)

It’s three months later (“TRE MESI DOPO”) than the Season 1 finale when this story begins. Lele is now a Deputy Inspector in the Ostia Police Department, despite being fresh out of the academy as it were. Spadino is a father-to-be thanks to his wife and close ally Angelica (Carlotta Antonelli), and he’s seeing a DJ named Teo on the down low instead of cruising for men in the local park. Aureliano, minus his shock of bleach-blond hair an plus a very handsome beard, has taken over operations in the Ostia for Samurai (Francesco Acquaroli), the taciturn lord of the city who still seems to be everywhere at once.

Each man has his own problems. Aureliano needs his missing sister Livia (a standout Barbara Chichiarelli), to sign on the dotted line so that the lucrative land deal in Ostia—which involves Samurai and the Roman-Italian crime families, their Sicilian backers, the city government, and the Vatican—can move forward; when she returns to the city but just as quickly disappears, Samurai punishes Aureliano by freezing the movement of coke through the area, alienating Aureliano’s underbosses. One goes so far as to rob the Adamis’ last stash of cocaine; Aureliano kills him for it pretty much right in front of his obviously ambitious daughter, whom I have a funny feeling Aureliano will be getting to know quite well as the season progresses.

Spadino, too, is in charge of his family now, a position he hopes to cement both with his baby—cementing the family line and helping to cover up the fact that he’s gay—and Livia, whom his men found and kidnapped before Aureliano could get to her. He plans to use her as a bargaining chip with Samurai to muscle in on the Ostia idea. But his mother Adelaide (Paola Sotgiu) has other plans. Despising him for his homosexuality and resenting him for his role in landing his brother Manfredi in the hospital after the older man got shot during a botched hit on Spadino’s pal Aureliano, she insists she’s the boss and plans to take over the Livia negotiations herself. “You have no future as long as I’m alive,” she tells her son, clearly without thinking through the implications of the statement.

By comparison, Lele has it relatively easy: He’s got a cushy job with the force with a cute underling to banter with and no family to worry about. (Aureliano took care of that when he killed Lele’s dad while escaping a police ambush Lele helped orchestrate on Samurai’s behalf; this of course is fairplay since Lele killed Aureliano’s dad on Samurai’s orders earlier last season.) But Samurai pops back into his life, as he is wont to do, revealing that he, not Lele’s late father, orchestrated his quick rise up the chain of command so he’d have a pawn in the police. The crimelord threatens to blackmail and ruin him unless he finds Livia before anyone else does.

Before we reach the denouement, let’s not forget our supporting players too. Once an idealistic do-gooding back-bencher, politician Amedeo Cinaglia (Filippo Nigro, strikingly bald and blue-eyed) discovers his Samurai-funded run for mayor has been more successful than he ever dreamed. He’s not close to winning of course, not as an independent, but his share of the vote will make him a kingmaker between Right and Left during the election’s second round. And Sara Monaschi, the once-powerful moneymaker for the Vatican, is at least somewhat back on her feet after the Ostia debacle: She’s turned caring for migrants in this increasingly racist city into a lucrative racket for the Church. But when the Cardinal who’s been serving as her backer in the project gets arrested for unknown crimes (though we can all guess, I’m sure), she’s all on her own again.

It all comes together at the end, as you might expect. Lele tracks Livia to Spadino, whom he visits not to arrest him but to warn him that Samurai is looking for her. Spadino heads off his mom’s plan to deal with Samurai directly by re-kidnapping Livia from the family compound with Angelica’s help. He and Lele deliver Livia to Aureliano directly as a gesture of good faith; all Spadino wants in return is to get the band back together and take on Samurai and every other opponent as a trio once again. Aureliano (who knows Spadino feels more toward him than friendship) takes Livia, then tells them to fuck off. (“But in Italian it sounds much nicer.”)

I’ve written all that out mostly to demonstrate how deceptively dense the show can sound, when watching it is an absolute breeze. The plot bounces from character to character and advances at full speed, but it’s all done so smartly and smoothly you can hardly believe the episode’s over when the end credits start rolling. Everything is rooted in the charismatic performances of the core cast, all of whom are pretty rotten people but all of whom are presented as having drives and emotions we recognize even if they exist in entirely different contexts. Spadino’s relationships with Angelica and Aureliano are both so rich and ripe for exploration, and you can see how the double life he leads has affected him in every weird and showy movement actor Giacomo Ferrara make. Aureliano’s newfound world-weariness will be riveting to see play out in his actions as well, and actor Alessandro Borghi wears it well. I’ve always found Cinaglia a magnetic character, perhaps because so much about him screams he should be anything but. And you’ve got to love Samurai, the least scary on-screen mob boss I can remember: He looks like a man who goes to the library and reads a newspaper he borrows from the reference desk and he goes around all but unguarded, yet everyone in Rome treats him like he has the brain of Lex Luthor and the brawn of Superman, which tells you something about him that his appearance disguises.

I’m so, so happy this show is back, and ideally this season’s eight-episode order will make every minute count. Long may IL GIORNO PRIMA reign.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Suburra: Blood On Rome Season 2 Episode 1 ("Find Her") on Netflix