Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Generation 56k’ On Netflix, An Italian Dramedy Where Thirtysomethings Remember Discovering The Internet In 1998

Where were you in 1998? Were you just coming of age and finding out who you were attracted to right when you discovered that the internet was such a cool thing? That’s the idea behind the new Italian dramedy Generation 56k, where two thirtysomethings think back to when they were 12 and this whole internet thing was still only accessible via work or very, very slow modems.

GENERATION 56K: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman is at a bar about to meet a man on an app date. The voice in her head talks about how she’s happy that the man’s face matches the picture.

The Gist: The woman is going on a date with Daniel (Angelo Spagnoletti), who spends time talking about just how much the whole Terminator franchise blows his mind. She knows it’s not a match but decides to sleep with him anyway just to not be rude. But she gets her “out call” and leaves. Daniel’s buddies and business partners Sandro (Fabio Balsamo) and Luca (Gianluca Colucci) are his out call, but the married Sandro thinks his single buddies are way too particular.

While he’s helping his parents move on the small island in Naples where he grew up, he finds his diary and thinks back to when he was 12, in 1998. Young Daniel (Alfredo Cerrone), with young Sandro (Egidio Mercurio) and Luca (Gennaro Filippone), conspire to borrow a porn VHS tape from a schoolyard thug, copy it, and rent it out so they can buy a PlayStation. One problem: As they start to make the copy, Daniel’s little sister invades, intending on watching a cartoon with her friends. They scramble out, but when the thug’s sister Matilda (Azzurra Iacone) insists on seeing the label on the tape, they found out that they took the cartoon tape that they were going to record over instead of the porn.

Back in the present, Daniel goes for another app date, and sees a young woman outside, who seems to recognize him. The two of them do a cocktail tasting and have a fantastic time; she even loves his theories about John Connor. He throws up, but she’s intrigued by him, and never tells him that she’s not the app date he was looking for. In the Lyft on the way home, we find out that the woman is a grown up Matilda (Cristina Cappelli), who went through her middle school years with a big crush on Daniel.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Generation 56k is a bit of an unusual format, especially when it gets into Daniel, Matilda and their friends discovering the wonders of the internet. The time-jumping format is reminiscent of Who Killed Sara? or even Firefly Lane, but it’s certainly closer in tone to the latter than the former.

Our Take: Suffice to say, this Gen Xer got a pain in his gut when he realized that these 35 year-olds are getting nostalgic about coming of age in 1998. To me, 1998 was about 12 seconds ago, but I was already an adult with a job and an apartment. Once I got past that little reality check, Generation 56k became an enjoyable comedy about two people who used to like each other way back when reconnecting in the present.

There’s a bit of a conceit that you have to get past, however: The fact that Matilda doesn’t tell Daniel who she is at first. So Daniel has to look for her; in the second episode, he comes close, calling the furniture restoration shop where she works, but he uses the name of the woman he thought he was meeting. But there’s another complication: Matilda is engaged to her super-nice boyfriend Enea (Sebastiano Kiniger). We find out all of this in the second episode, told more from Matilda’s perspective; we also see how the 12-year-old versions of themselves connected, through an assignment given to them by their principal when the whole porn tape incident came to a head.

There were definitely some funny moments in those first two episodes, but we hope that the writers figure out a way to make sure the obstacles don’t become artificial impediments to Matilda and Daniel getting together. But the writers do a good job of building the individual worlds around each of the main characters — Matilda is still friends with Ines (Claudia Tranchese), whom young Daniel had a crush on when he was 12. What we’re looking for is some examination of those worlds as Daniel looks for Matilda and Matilda tries to figure out how to disentangle herself from Enea.

Sex and Skin: Just Daniel and his date getting undressed as they were going to have sex — despite the fact that they don’t want to go on another date. But it was all pretty tame stuff.

Parting Shot: Daniel goes back to his place, where Luca is staying, and after his phone charges, he realizes that his app date stood him up. So he has no idea who this woman he had such a great time with really is. Luca offers to make him some tea.

Sleeper Star: Both versions of Luca — Collucci and Filippone — are funny in their own ways. The grown version is low-key funny while his 12-year-old counterpart seems to be more high-strung.

Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not 100% sure how the “discovering the internet” angle plays into this story — the “56k” in the show’s name refers to the speed of the modems people used to get onto the internet in 1998. Unless they discover early internet porn, it feels like more of a period detail than anything else.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The main characters in Generation 56k are appealing and the story seems like it’ll be a fun one to follow. We just hope that the show doesn’t throw too many artificial barriers in the main couple’s way.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Generation 56k On Netflix