Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Trial’ On Netflix, An Italian Drama Where A Prosecutor Has A Too-Close Connection With A Murdered Teen

We don’t ask for much when it comes to our crime thrillers; we really don’t. The biggest thing that we ask is that the investigation of the crime in that thriller at least hints at some level of reality. The Trial, an Italian thriller that debuted on Netflix this week, looks like it’s going to be one of those thrillers. Then the first part hits an early twist and… well, read on to find out.

THE TRIAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We zoom in on a man-made ravine under a bunch of highways, as a voice says, “What is justice? Try to imagine it as a mechanism made of rules and procedures that serve to discover the truth of a crime.” As we zoom in, we see that there’s a body in that ravine. It’s March, 2018.

The Gist: Elena Guerra (Vittoria Puccini) is a prosecutor, which she explains to a class of 4th graders she’s visiting that she “supervises the police” on a case. As she’s jogging (away from her problems, perhaps?) she gets a call from her investigator, Giacomo Andreoli (Simone Colombari), that a woman’s body has been found in a ravine. The body has been in the water at least a day. She died when a sharp instrument pierced her eye and reached her brain. She’s identified as Angelica Petroni (Margherita Caviezel), whom she finds out is just short of her 18th birthday.

But Elena has other things to worry about, namely that her husband, Giovanni Malaguti (Maurizio Lastrico), is ready to divorce her and take a job at the Whitney Museum in New York. She tries to reconcile with him, asking if she can move to New York with him. She tells her boss that she can’t investigate Petroni’s murder because she’s taking a leave of absence. But her boss wants her to at least speak to the girl’s family.

When she does, she finds out from the girl’s mother that she was adopted and went looking for her birth parents. Elena also finds out that she’s been following a band that broke up years ago, and wants to track down the whereabouts of the members, especially Claudio Cavalleri (Michele Morrone). She also finds out from the convent that placed Petroni with her family that they gave her the name of her birth father, a name that got a reaction out of Elena.

The birth father is Stefano Lanzoni (Alessandro Averone), an old flame of hers; it turns out that the girl is Elena’s daughter, and she came to him a few days before she died looking for help. Stefano wants Elena to go after who killed her, but Elena feels the need to recuse herself, and anyway, she’s moving. But then, because no one knows her connection, she asks her boss to keep her on the case for as long as she can stay, especially after finding out that Petroni was pregnant. She especially wants to talk to Cavallieri, who was seen with Petroni the night she died.

Cavallieri, married to wealthy socialite Linda Monaco (Camilla Filippi), hires the family’s shark of an attorney, Ruggero Barone (Francesco Scianna) to help him in his meeting with Elena. Barone tells him to deny everything, but during the meeting Elena sees through him. She brings in Linda, and she ends up throwing her husband under the bus; he was not only having sex with the underage girl, but the two of them were part of an escort ring. That revelation leads to the discovery of Cavallieri’s body bleeding out in a bathtub.

Our Take: The Trial (Original Title: Il Processo) has got some weird tonal problems that we’re not sure can be fixed as the eight-part series goes along. It tries to have a sense of humor during its first few minutes, with Elena scaring the shit out of those 4th graders, as she investigates a stolen green pen during her demonstration, then jokes about how jogging is bad for the back. The biggest sign that her husband is leaving is that he carries a tiny orange tree out of their apartment. Giacomo tells Elena that he’s connected.

But then things get serious, and then they get weird, and then they get head-shakingly unbelievable. First there’s the series of coincidences that leads Elena to find out that the body she just found also happens to be the daughter she placed for adoption almost 18 years before. Then there’s the fact that she barely entertains the notion of recusing herself, the idea that perhaps either Cavallieri or his wife Linda Monaco had something to do with it, and finally the fact that she says she’s going to join her husband in New York, but you know she won’t, else there won’t be a show. It feels that the first episode wasn’t an exercise in exposition as much as it was an exercise in creating a knot that’s going to be a pain in the butt to untie.

The three leads, Puccini, Scianna and Filippi, do a fine job in their roles, and the cat-and-mouse between Elena and Ruggero during what’s likely to be Linda’s trial will make the show at least a little bit interesting. Elena has something to hide and it’s Ruggero’s job to figure out what it is. But the series starts off on such a wobbly storytelling foundation that it’s going to be hard to build something solid on top of it, no matter how good the adversaries are during the trial.

Sex and Skin: Elena has sex with Giovanni, and we see Petroni’s naked body after her autopsy is over.

Parting Shot: Elena sits with Ruggero and Linda to question Linda after Cavallieri is found dead.

Sleeper Star: We’re not sure how Simone Colombari’s character Giacomo fits in this story, but we’d like to find out how his connectedness comes into play in this case.

Most Pilot-y Line: We’re never sure why we need to see stark-naked bodies on slabs after the autopsy is completed. What’s the point?

Our Call: SKIP IT. The Trial is a good looking, well-acted show. But it starts out so shaky that even if it improves, the hoops that it jumps through to get to the trial in the title puts the rest of the series in doubt.

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.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Trial On Netflix