Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Brigands: The Quest For Gold’ On Netflix, About Italian Bandit Groups That Band Together To Look For Stolen Riches

There are times when you’re watching a show and you just know that, more likely than not, the massive cast introduced in the first episode is not going to be served well. Some characters will get some depth and backstory, but most of the others will be fairly interchangeable. That’s the feeling we got with a new Italian historical drama on Netflix.

BRIGANDS: THE QUEST FOR GOLD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A map of Sicily and southern Italy. “KINGDOM OF THE TWO SICILIES. YEAR 1860.” A voice says, “People say that my land is poor. That it’s burned by the sun. That it’s damned. But that’s not true. My land is rich. That’s why there’s always someone there to ransack it.”

The Gist: Those are the words of Giuseppe Schiavone (Marlon Joubert) about Palermo. Schiavone fought for the red shirts during the battles that eventually led to the reunification of Italy, only to see the leadership take all of the gold from Palermo’s bank to pay for the war, leaving death and destruction behind. The gold is buried somewhere on the mainland, and the map to find it again has also gone missing.

Two years later, Schiavone is now a notorious bounty hunter named Sparrowhawk. He brings a catch to the central Italian town of Basilicata because he knows that a landowner named Clemente Degli Orti (Gianni Vastarella) has the map.

Don Clemente indeed has that map, and he’s scheming with a military leader named Fumel (Pietro Micci) to find the gold. Fumel is concerned with the brigands, gangs of bandits that attack from hidden positions in the woods. Clemente says that’s a myth, proffered by someone who also says that a woman will liberate the South. Clemente’s wife, Filomena de Marco (Michela De Rossi), knows that Fumel’s plan to recruit soldiers from the poor families she used to be a part of is pointless, but Clemente is very dismissive of her views.

She vows to help a friend from her village by getting her medicine for her son and some clean water, but when the friend comes in the middle of the night for what Filomena promised, Clemente finds them and shoots the woman dead. Telling Filomena that she’s ungrateful for what he did to pull her out of poverty, he tosses her in the well. She manages to climb her way out and, when Clemente finds that she survived the fall, she turns around and stabs him in the neck. At the same time, Sparrowhawk is at Clemente’s compound looking for the map, and gets arrested.

Filomena manages to escape, but is found by the Monacos, a family of brigands. They hope she can bring a ransom, as they need money to help get the father of the group’s leader, Pietro (Orlando Cinque) out of prison. Once they find out who she is, Maria “Ciccilla” Oliverio (Ivana Lotito), one of the group’s fiercest bandits, is ready to kill her. But Filomena saves herself by telling them she can get them the money they need. So they go back to Clemente’s estate, where she gives them the contents of her now-dead husband’s safe and takes the map for herself.

In the meantime, Fumel is looking for Filomena, and recruits the now-captured Sparrowhawk to find her. He takes the job to spare himself a death sentence, but insists on being sent with the other prisoners — including the man he captured — to that deadly prison, because he has his own plan.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Brigands: The Quest For Gold has a similar vibe as the Korean series Song Of The Bandits.

Our Take: There’s a lot to keep track of in Brigands: The Quest For Gold (original title: Briganti); there are at least two teams of brigands, the townspeople in the village where Filomena is from, as well as Fumel and his Piedmontese soldiers. There’s also Michelina Di Cesare (Matilda Lutz), whom Filomena is searching for after she kills Don Clemente. While the first episode does a good job of setting up this quest for the gold that rightfully belongs back in Palermo, we wonder how well the rest of the limited series is going to keep track of everyone.

Michela De Rossi, who plays Filomena, is no doubt going to be the focal point of this series. She proves to the Monacos that she can be of use to them, and eventually helps them band together with Sparrowhawk and his group to find the gold and defeat Fumel. Her character is the most compelling of what is for the most part a generic group of bandits.

As the adventure continues, we can see Sparrowhawk, Filomena, Ciccilla and Fumel being the characters that get fleshed out the most. Even so, the characters aren’t much more than sketches at this point. And with such a sprawling story, we’re not sure how much deeper we’re going to see even those four characters go.

That being said, the scenery — at least in the daytime scenes, since the ones at night were extraordinarily hard to see — is spectacular, and the setting reinforces the idea that the “Wild West” ethic of the last half of the 19th century wasn’t just limited to North America.

Sex and Skin: Besides Filomena getting in the tub after climbing out of the well, there is none in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Filomena goes back to the Monacos’ encampment. Pietro is impressed enough to say “Welcome to the Monaco family,” then Ciccilla knocks Filomena out with the butt of her shotgun.

Sleeper Star: Ivana Lotito’s Ciccilla is the wildcard of the Monaco family, and she’s likely going to be the one who will have the most backstory.

Most Pilot-y Line: Sparrowhawk tries to escape while getting his mug shot taken — which, being 1862, he has to stand really still for — but when he finally is subdued, his bloody face is photographed at gunpoint. He holds up his mask in the photo.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re just not sure if Brigands: The Quest For Gold is going to hold up under the weight of its massive cast. But what we’ve seen so far effectively sets up who the players are in this story.

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.