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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Bad Guy’ On Prime Video, Where A Mafia-Fighting Prosecutor Hatches A Revenge Plan When Accused Of Having Mafia Ties

How many shows have we seen where we see the Mafia from the inside? And how many have we seen with someone in law enforcement going undercover? There are dozens of shows like this around. But one where a man goes undercover in Cosa Nostra in order to get revenge on the people who sent him to prison? That’s a bit different.

THE BAD GUY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A dusty, cobweb-covered chandelier shakes and rattles during an explosion, sending dust into an open sea urchin. A man does pushups in what looks like an abandoned house.

The Gist: The man, Dr. Nino Scotellaro (Luigi Lo Cascio), has been a fugitive for some time. Outside the building, a Special Forces soldier is lying on the ground, his legs having just been blown off by a landmine. The soldier who calls him out tells him that if they keep walking and there’s another mine, “Your sister will be blown out next.”

Eight years earlier, Scotellaro is a magistrate in Palermo, Sicily, consistently going after Costa Nostra figures, and for fifteen years, his team has been after one of the biggest, Mariano Suro (Antonio Catania). We first see him in a maximum security prison, trying to pry info on Suro out of Mafia killer Salvatore Tracina (Vincenzo Pirrotta). Then he finds out about Suro’s stash of info, thanks to some surveillance provided by a young Special Forces agent, Leonarda Scotellaro (Selene Caramazza).

Yes, Leonarda is Nino’s younger sister; he pulled some strings to get her into the Special Forces as a way to help her with her addiction issues, and she’s excelled in the role. Nino’s wife, Luvi Bray (Claudia Pandolfi), is an ace defense attorney in Rome whose father was killed by Suro a number of years prior; she’s producing a TV movie based on the case.

As the Special Forces are about to raid Suro’s storage unit, Nino has Leonarda called off, because he has a hunch that Suro is going to have his people steal a kidney from a recently-deceased skiing champion so he can get a transplant. He convinces the commander to raid the location, but Suro has already left.

Nino then has to decide whether to take a government job in Rome, closer to Luvi, or take over the office in Palermo when his boss Giusy (Guia Jelo) has to resign due to early-onset Alzheimer’s. He feels they’re so close to nailing Suro, he thinks it’s his duty to stay. Then, during the premiere of the movie about Luvi’s father, he’s brought in for questioning. Apparently, some wiretaps heard by Leonarda implicate Nino as a Mafia contact.

Luvi promises to get him off, but he gets 15 years instead. Five years later, during a transport from the prison to a social work assignment, the bridge the truck is on collapses, and Nino is the only survivor. This is when his revenge plan is set in motion; his first stop is at the home of a familiar foe.

The Bad Guy
Photo: Prime Video

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Bad Guy is somewhat reminiscent of The Fugitive, but with a bit more of a sense of humor and a revenge plan attached.

Our Take: Ludovica Rampoldi, Davide Serino and Giuseppe Stasi created The Bad Guy, and they’ve created a winding, twisty tale of a man that basically becomes the “bad guy” he’s accused of being, simply because someone saw fit to falsely accuse him of Mafia ties to begin with.

Because of the bridge collapse, everyone, including his wife and sister, assumes Nino is dead, and that’s going to give him the cover he needs to execute his plan. The way he goes about it, changing his identity and look, then finding the people that sent him to prison to begin with, should be a fun ride, even as  Nino laments missing his wife and sister.

As he aligns himself with Tracina and his family, the idea that the former enemies will be allies due to their common enemy, Suro. What we appreciate is that the show’s creators have given Nino and the rest of the cast at least a wry sense of humor about their work, but not so crazy that it undercuts the seriousness of their task.

Will Nino’s primary “enemy” be his sister Leonarda or his wife Luvi? How will they figure out who he is? All of this is fascinating to anticipate to say the least, and the show is certainly paced well enough to keep all of these aspects of the story going without much lag.

Sex and Skin: Leonarda gets oral sex from a woman named Katerina (Anastasia Doaga); we’re not sure if she’s a prostitute or someone Leonarda has a relationship with. But it does seem like she’s keeping her sexuality on the down-low for some reason or another.

Parting Shot: In a callback to the prison scene where Tracina loosens his handcuffs with a paperclip, fugitive Nino, still in cuffs after the bridge collapse, goes to Tracina’s house. After Tracina shoots him in the chest with — buckshot? A beanbag gun? not sure — Tracina recognizes Nino, who asks the mobster, “Do your little trick for me?”

Sleeper Star: Guia Jelo is quirky and poignant in her few scenes as Nino’s boss, Giusy Corifena, especially when she tells him she remembers the attendance roster of her middle school but not what she just ate three seconds earlier.

Most Pilot-y Line: While watching the movie about his father-in-law, Nino tells Luvi that the actor playing him looks nothing like him. Then we see the actor nod in Nino’s direction and notice that he looks exactly like Nino.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Bad Guy is a transformation and revenge tale, but one where the person being transformed is fundamentally good, and becoming bad just to enact revenge. It’s an interesting concept that should lead to an entertaining series.

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.