May 12 : "The Bastards Of Pizzofalcone"

A bunch of reject police officers from various precincts are dumped in together to finish out a few months at a city precinct that is being closed after its former members are on their way to jail for corruption! They supposedly will only close some loose ends and finish up some routine cases before the precinct is closed a few months from now.

Such is the background and basis for the Italian tv series, "The Bastards of Pizzofalcone", now available for streaming. It's based on the mystery novels by Maurizio de Giovanni.

One of the things I like about this series is that the characters and story lines are not cookie-cutter or formulaic like those in too many American mystery series. Sure, there's the traditional whodunit aspect, but there's more depth as it's interspersed with a close look at the comedy and tragedy of the characters' lives. The characters are multi-dimensional, and that applies to both the bad ones as well as the good ones. A good part of this character-driven series centers around the personal lives of the detectives. Indeed when the criminal is caught and brought to justice, that's not the end of the episode. We go on for another fifteen minutes as we follow each of the detectives back to their respective home environments where they face some of their own comedies and tragedies.

As you might guess, the plots mushroom from those routine cases into stories unexpectedly complex and intriguing. With a deeper sense of humanity than we see in many American series, this series is worth checking out. I'm hooked! (I'm well into the first season so far). And I should also mention the excellent cinematography along with the spellbinding architecture. And the good incidental music adds just the right textures.

The show is available for streaming on MHZ Choice. While it's a subscription service for a low $7.99 per month, you can get a 7-day free trial, and you can always sign up and cancel if this turns out to be the only show you want to look at. Here is the click to the main page for the series, where you can find a link to a short trailer which introduces all the characters: "The Bastards of Pizzofalcone" main page (CLICK HERE). Pic above is a screenshot I took from the trailer.

However, if you're adventurous and want to see more, you'll find many shows from many countries on MHZ, all listed by their country of origin. Here is their listing or breakdown "by country": Select a show "by country" listing (CLICK HERE).

As you can probably tell, I really like this series and highly recommend it, and I'm also a big fan of MHZ in general and recommend them as well.