Stream It Or Skip It?

The emotional family drama genre didn’t start with This Is Us, but it definitely set a new standard for how these stories are told. Time jumps, surprises, and layers of emotion now seem to be SOP for dramas of this type. A new Italian drama in this genre uses many of the devices This Is Us used, but its storytelling isn’t designed to shock and surprise.

MY FAMILY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man wakes up as his phone alarm goes off. It’s 7:04 on his bedside clock, so he’s hit Snooze at least once.

The Gist: After waking up, the first thing Fausto (Eduardo Scarpetta) does is leave a voice message for four of the people he’s closest to in life. He tells them about a dream he had about a future when his mother Lucia (Vanessa Scalera) dates men her age and is content, where his brother Valerio (Massimiliano Caiazzo) is an English lord, where his friend Demetrio (Antonio Gargiulo) could tie his tie, and his childhood friend Maria (Cristiana Dell’Anna) lived outside of Rome and swore less. In general, though, he’s just happy he woke up, as he’s in his last days due to an illness that isn’t yet specified.

He gets his sons Libero (Jua Leo Migliore) and Ercole (Tommaso Guidi) up, dances with them to The Clash’s “I Fought The Law,” then sends them to school with Maria. He then takes a drag from an oxygen tank, a concession to his waning energy.

We flash back to 2011, where he meets Sarah (Gaia Weiss), an Englishwoman visiting Rome. “Everything started that day, the good things and the bad things,” we hear him say. He saw her at a cafe, and instantly fell for her; he charmed her into spending the day with him, but only after he got his beard shaved. They spend a whirlwind week together, and when Sarah leaves to go back to Bristol, Fausto whines to Maria and Demetrio that she’s nothing like any woman he’s been with — which, as Maria angrily points out, includes her. After avoiding getting hurt inside Maria’s car, he races to the airport and convinces Sarah to stay, despite the fact that Sarah says, “I’m fucked up.”

Back in 2024, as Fausto’s health declines, he tries to get his affairs in order. He doesn’t want his boys’ mother to get custody of them, but he’s not sure he wants Lucia to move them out of Rome and take care of them. He wants Valerio to stay sober and take over his business. He wonders why he and Maria never got together except for one night stands. Maria, for her part, tries to get Demetrio to see Fausto one last time.

Photo: Claudia Sicuranza/Netflix

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? My Family (Original title: Storia della mia famiglia), certainly has the same time-jumping feel as shows like This Is Us or A Million Little Things.

Our Take: Created by Filippo Gravino, My Family doesn’t really try to pull any narrative rugs out from under its viewers. We know from the first minute of the show that Fausto is dying — though we have no idea what he’s dying of, though it’s likely cancer, given what his hair looks like compared to the flashbacks — and that his part of the story will be told with both the copious voice memos he leaves to his loved ones as well as the flashbacks that look at his and Sarah’s life together.

We were also not surprised with the reveal that Sarah is Libero and Ercole’s mother, and we don’t think that Gravino meant it to be a huge twist. The part of the story we’re more curious about is how things fell apart between Sarah and Fausto, to the point where he doesn’t even want her to have custody of their sons after he dies.

The series is going to explore how Lucia, Valerio, Demetrio and Maria rally around the boys and make a new safe, secure, happy family for them, as Sarah reenters everyone’s lives. At the same time, we’re going to continue to go back in time to see Sarah and Fausto’s relationship grow, the two of them becoming parents, and everything falling apart.

Yes, this is a playbook we’ve seen before (see the reference to This Is Us above), but Eduardo Scarpetta is charming as Fausto, who seriously thinks he’s immortal, especially after narrowly escaping getting seriously hurt by a falling light pole in a storm. And the chemistry between Scarpetta and Weiss is undeniable, as is the chemistry between Scarpetta and Dell’Anna, who plays Maria. Maria has been with Fausto through his health journey, and cares for his sons like a loving aunt might. She’s going to be the lynchpin to keeping this group together, knowing how beneficial it will be for Fausto’s sons. But the scenes where we see Maria and Fausto makes us wonder, like Fausto did when he was dying, why they never got together over the years.

Photo: CLAUDIA SICURANZA/NETFLIX

Sex and Skin: Some nudity after the first time Fausto and Sarah have sex.

Parting Shot: In one of his final voice memos, Fausto envisions the four people closest to him functioning well as a family with his sons, and he says, “Anyway, guys, I’m right here. I’m keeping an eye on you.”

Sleeper Star: We like how Antonio Gargiulo makes Demetrio a bit pathetic without making him a sad sack.

Most Pilot-y Line: As Maria goads Demetrio into going to see Fausto, one of his real estate clients, an American woman, insists she hears a baby crying in a post next to the kitchen.

Our Call: STREAM IT. My Family isn’t trying to surprise its viewers; it just paints a funny and affecting picture of a man’s brief life and his attempts to make sure everyone is in the right state of mind after he dies.

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.