Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bang Bang Baby’ on Prime Video, Where An Italian Teenager Joins Her Father’s Mob Family Business

Young Pope and My Brilliant Friend producer Lorenzo Mieli’s newest Italian series is Bang Bang Baby (Prime Video), the story of a young woman’s assimilation into the mafia life after she learns by chance that the father she was told was dead is actually alive and well and doing dirty deeds for his Calabrian crime family in 1980’s Milan. Bang Bang Baby is loosely based on the life of Marisa Merico, who was born and raised in her mother’s native England before learning of her Italian father’s life of crime and eventually joining the family business as a “mafia princess.” 

BANG BANG BABY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: An old movie plays on a tube TV that rests beyond the espresso machine at a shadowy cafe lit in eerie greens and the flashing lights of arcade games. Alice (Arianna Becheroni) watches as the film gives way to a commercial for Big Babol chewing gum.

The Gist: It’s 1986, and high schooler Alice (Becheroni) lives with her mom Gabriella (Lucia Mascino) in the suburban town of Bussoleno, where her mother agitates for a version of feminism that plateaus at being a better driver than men and holding down a steady factory job. Alice attends school aimlessly, choosing vocational classes over hairdressing classes and leaving the styling and nail polishing to her gay bestie Jimbo (Pietro Paschini). “School, work, everything is decided,” Alice mutters in voiceover as “Road to Nowhere” by Talking Heads plays on the soundtrack.

Alice, lost in her daily funk, is shocked into a new reality when she randomly sees a picture of her father in a Milan newspaper. You know, her father who Gabriella said was dead after a very public shooting ten years before at a carnival. Determined, she taps Jimbo for a fact-finding mission to Milan, but when she’s rebuffed at the jailhouse – her dad was in the paper because he was arrested for indecent exposure – Alice presents herself at her grandmother’s rambling house down a Milan alleyway. “I knew sooner or later you’d come looking for your family,” Nonna Lina (Dora Romano) says, and she takes Alice to the jail herself, where a small “Don’t you know who I am” reminder to a police lieutenant gets them a cellblock visit with Santo Barone (Adriano Giannini), the father Alice hasn’t seen in ten years.

Lina isn’t just any grandma. She’s the matriarch of a close-knit family who operate within the Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, and she’s angry with her son Santo, who was supposed to lean on a local official but somehow got himself arrested instead. And Alice, who was eager to see her father but is still conflicted about her feelings of abandonment, nevertheless agrees to a series of hastily whispered instructions from Santo. “Love is a bastard,” Alice told us early on in voiceover. “First it charms you, makes you feel special. But when you let your guard down, it hits you.” She’s about to confront just how much her father’s love means to her.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Prime Video also features two seasons of Gomorrah, the crime drama about the Neapolitan mafia (all seasons of which are available on HBO Max). Over on Netflix, there are three seasons of the gritty Suburra: Blood on Rome, about crime doings mixing with dirty politics and the Vatican. And don’t forget about Mafia Dolls, the streamer’s saucy telenovela about a group of women who intertwine themselves with Colombian cartel bosses.

Our Take: To be sure, Bang Bang Baby will travel to some very dark places. In the pilot episode, a dead body shows up, Alice handles a revolver at least twice, a Barone uncle brandishes an AK-47 alongside joyous children at play, and there’s also that bit of tough talk from Nonna, about plunging her enemies’ bodies into acid. This ‘Ndrangheta clan is all about family, but they’re a crime family, too. But in what is already becoming one of its best attributes, Baby freely intersects mafia life mechanics with the inner life of thoughtful, perceptive Alice. When she imagines the violent act of shooting someone, it’s with visual allusions to that advertisement for Big Babol gum, a little kid in pigtails and a cowboy hat popping bubbles as she pops her six gun. As Alice recalls the night her father was shot, with her and her mother flying free in a carnival ride as the gunshot rang out, gumballs fall like rain from the sky, burying her memories of childhood bliss. And once she arrives at her nonna’s house in Milan, where she’d last visited as an infant, Alice knows intrinsically that it’s her real home, a place of comfort unlike what her mother tried to build in Bussolengo.

It’s still early in Bang Bang Baby. But Arianna Becheroni is already bringing a formidable blend of disaffected teenage indifference and surehanded determination to Alice – her jailhouse confrontation with Santo is a real highlight – and Baby heightens her world’s visuals with the liberal use of deep blues, inky greens, bright splotches of pink, and a neon sheen perfect for a show set in the 1980’s. The music helps too, of course, with “Killing Time” by Echo & the Bunnymen soundtracking an ‘Ndrangheta blood oath ceremony and Jimbo bopping to Italian singer Loredana Berte’s Abba-like 1979 hit “Folle Citta.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Alice imagines a scene Nonna Lina had spoken of, softly singing a lullaby to her infant self, and she’s still musing over love. “About the major fucked-up things it makes us do,” Alice says in voiceover. “Things that are against logic, against the law, against ourselves. Just to be loved.”

Sleeper Star: Dora Romano (The Hand of God, My Brilliant Friend) is a force of nature as Nonna Guendalina Barone, Alice’s grandmother and an ‘Ndrangheta matriarch. She knows just what to do when her granddaughter comes to her about Santo, as all grandmothers would. But she also knows what to do about any competitors to her mafia standing. “If any vile bastard gets in the way, I’ll dissolve him in acid, so help me God!”

Most Pilot-y Line: “I wonder what our life would be like if Dad hadn’t died,” Alice says to Gabriella, and she watches her mother’s back stiffen and neck muscles strain. “What kind of talk is that? You can’t change the past,” Gabriella snaps. And besides, “there’s nothing to say. He was a criminal. He was murdered like all criminals.” And right then Alice knows her mother is lying, and it’ll be up to her to confront her very alive father.

Our Call: STREAM IT. With evocative lighting, music, and a sense of the fantastic, Bang Bang Baby is led by a terrific performance from newcomer Arianna Becheroni and promises plenty of family and mafia family drama.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges