“Non l’abbiamo vista arrivare!”
by Marica Spalletta e Paola De Rosa
Overview
Rai Due
2020 – in production
5 seasons; 62 episodes
Carmine Elia [season 1]; Milena Cocozza [season 2]; Ivan Silvestrini [season 2-3-4]; Ludovico Di Martino [season 5], Francesca Amitrano [season 5]
Cristiana Farina, Maurizio Careddu
Cristiana Farina, Maurizio Careddu, Luca Montesi, Angelo Petrella (series premise)
Rai Fiction, Picomedia
Roberto Cimatti [season 1], Francesca Amitrano [seasons 2, 3, 4, 5], Ettore Abate [season 5]
Marco Garavaglia [season 1], Federico Maria Maneschi [season 2], Brunella Perrotta [seasons 2, 3, 4, 5]
Stefano Lentini
Carmine Recano, Carolina Crescentini, Lucrezia Guidone, Massimiliano Caiazzo, Nicolas Maupas, Valentina Romani, Giacomo Giorgio, Matteo Paolillo, Domenico Cuomo, Artem Tkachuk, Clotilde Esposito, Antonio D’Aquino, Maria Esposito, Alessandro Orrei, Francesco Panarella, Giuseppe Pirozzi, Salahudin Tijani Imrana, Clara Soccini, Yeva Sai
Rai, Netflix, Beta Film
Gallery
Poster
Poster (second season)
Pressbook
First season
Third season
Representation strategies, rhetorics and stereotypes
Narrative & characters
Born from an idea by Cristiana Farina and loosely inspired by the juvenile prison of Nisida, Mare fuori stages an Italian inflection of the teen-crime drama through a choral, multi-layered narrative. Set within the IPM of Naples – reconstructed for the screen in the Molosiglio area, next to the port – the series places in tension two opposing symbolic spaces: the penal institution, closed and regulated, and the “mare fuori,” a recurring image of freedom and a metaphor for the possibility of redemption.
The storyline weaves together two narrative registers: on one side, the dynamics of crime, family clans, and the repercussions of individual choices; on the other, the trajectories typical of adolescent storytelling – love, friendship, rivalry, crises of identity – unfolding within the suspended temporality of incarceration. The IPM is depicted as a complex microcosm, where young people from diverse social and cultural backgrounds are compelled to share spaces, languages, and destinies, dramatizing the coexistence of vulnerability, aspiration, and power relations.
At the heart of the series lies its polyphonic construction: boys and girls who arrive at the institution for different reasons – by choice, by mistake, or by necessity – are forced to redefine themselves within the everyday reality of prison life.
The narrative arc of Mare Fuori begins with the encounter – at once a clash and an unlikely bond – between Carmine Di Salvo and Filippo Ferrari, two young men from radically different worlds. Carmine bears the stigma of a Camorra surname he longs to repudiate; Filippo, by contrast, hails from affluent, bourgeois Milan and finds himself imprisoned after a tragic mistake. Through their relationship, viewers are ushered into the IPM – a juvenile detention center that operates as a closed microcosm where the logics of power, survival, and solidarity constantly collide and intertwine. Looming over them is the opposition of the Ricci clan, with Ciro – son of the boss Don Salvatore – embodying the inescapable weight of familial legacy and violence as a seemingly predetermined destiny.
From this initial core, the story expands into an ensemble narrative. Some characters carry the burden of criminal affiliations, whether by birth or by choice: Rosa Ricci enters the IPM bent on revenge but finds herself entangled in an impossible love for Carmine; Edoardo Conte, once a Ricci affiliate, rises to prominence while struggling with the fraught tension between power and the desire for emancipation. Others embody the precarious codes of “criminal loyalty”: Totò kills to prove his allegiance; Cucciolo and Micciarella, bound by brotherhood, see their fraternal tie fractured by a forbidden love that challenges clan hierarchies.
Other figures are shaped more by personal vulnerability than by the criminal order. Naditza flees the suffocating traditions of her social milieu; Cardiotrap channels the rage of domestic abuse into shared music; Silvia is dragged into prison by deception and wavers between guilt and awakening; Pino (il pazzo, “the mad one”) learns to temper his aggression through his bond with animals; Gaetano (‘O Pirucchio) glimpses redemption only to have it brutally extinguished upon leaving the IPM; Kubra navigates a complex path of identity; Alina embodies an adolescence perpetually on the run.
Alongside them emerge darker presences: Viola Torri, consumed by an obsessive, pathological relationship with violence; Crazy J, a self-destructive rapper; Dobermann, a young migrant carrying the raw weight of survival into the IPM; Simone, secretly affiliated with the Di Salvo clan; and Samuele and Federico, tied to drug trafficking and corruption, whose actions destabilize the fragile internal balance of the prison.
Within the IPM, the relationship with the adult world constitutes a crucial dimension of the narrative. Directors Paola Vinci and Sofia Durante embody two distinct yet parallel visions of juvenile detention: both marked by past personal traumas and committed to upholding institutional rules, but differentiated by the type of leadership they exercise – toward the young inmates as well as the adults who work alongside them. At the forefront is Commander Massimo, perpetually torn between discipline and empathy, and educator Beppe, who perceives in the young offenders above all the possibility of a different future. Among the correctional officers, Liz and Lino reveal how permeable the boundary can be between authority and personal involvement.
Outside the prison, families remain a constant source of pressure. On one side stand the clans, led by figures such as Donna Wanda and Don Salvatore, custodians of power struggles and cycles of revenge. On the other, more intimate and ambivalent bonds take shape, such as the fraught relationship between Edoardo and his wife Carmela. It is within this web of institutional and familial ties that the series underscores how detention is never an isolated experience but rather part of a larger social network – one that shapes both guilt and the fragile possibility of redemption.
Stereotypes & strategies of inclusion
Mare Fuori engages with the pivotal tensions of adolescence when shaped by experiences of criminality and incarceration, weaving together complex identity trajectories where questions of gender, power, and social belonging reverberate. The series’ narrative framework frequently adopts representational strategies that draw on highly codified, even stereotypical figures and models – a device that serves not only to anchor the story in recognizable social realities, but also to foster audience identification and intensify the drama of unfolding events.
For this reason, the characters move between established archetypes and “rupture moments” that compel viewers to reflect on inclusion and on the dynamics of exclusion structuring young people’s worlds. Among the central thematic concerns, three stand out in particular: the relationship between sexual orientation and power; the multiple forms and contradictions of female leadership; and the weight of familial and cultural bonds on the protagonists’ life choices.
What follows is an exploration of some of these key narrative nodes, through emblematic scenes and situations that make visible both the persistence of stereotypes and the series’ attempts to challenge or transcend them.
Sexual Orientation and Power
Within the IPM, power follows strict, codified rules that mirror the rigidity of external criminal dynamics. One of the most entrenched conventions is the link between authority and heterosexuality: masculinity – understood as physical strength and male dominance – is represented as a prerequisite for gaining recognition. From the very first season, this principle is made explicit without ambiguity. When Filippo first arrives in the prison, Totò and Gaetano take it upon themselves to introduce him to the unwritten rules of coexistence, delineating the boundaries that must not be crossed. They do so through jokes and pointed remarks that reveal the group’s hierarchical nature, making clear from the outset that youth power is structured around stereotyped categories of gender and sexual orientation – and reinforcing the notion that only those who embody a virile, heterosexual model can aspire to status and legitimacy.
This logic becomes even more evident in the trajectory of Cucciolo, whose love for Milos – a member of Ciro Ricci’s clan – destabilizes the internal hierarchies and undermines his aspiration to leadership. Here, homosexuality is not portrayed as a mere facet of identity but as a narrative obstacle that relegates him to the margins: heterosexuality emerges as an implicit prerequisite for access to power, and any deviation from this norm becomes a marker of exclusion. In parallel, Milos himself – secretly gay – is confined to a purely executive role within the clan, reinforcing the notion that non-heterosexual identities are narratively associated with subordinate positions, stripped of genuine authority.
Female Leadership: Brutal Masculinity vs. Fragility
The women who wield power in Mare Fuori navigate between two sharply defined narrative poles. On one side stands Donna Wanda, embodying the hardest and most ruthless form of command: a leadership built on strength, authority, and fear – the very traits of what could be termed “brutal masculinity.” Her position of dominance, earned within a criminal milieu, overturns the traditional roles culturally assigned to women but does so by adopting tools typically coded as masculine: violence, control, and uncompromising discipline. In this way, the series acknowledges a woman’s capacity to act as a boss, yet does so through the replication of a male-coded model of power, reaffirming that leadership remains tethered to the logic of force.
Particularly emblematic is the confrontation between Donna Wanda and Don Salvatore Ricci, staged like a boxing match: two figures squaring off in a symbolic ring, negotiating the division of drug territories. Here, parity of status is both made visible and spectacularized – yet Donna Wanda emerges as the one with the upper hand, a sign of commanding skill conveyed through the same visual and narrative grammar long reserved for male criminal power. The scene does not transcend the stereotype; rather, it confirms it: a woman may rise to the top only by embracing masculine codes, excelling on the same terrain of strength and strategic violence.
At the opposite end of the spectrum stands Liz, a prison officer who, despite holding formal authority, fails to maintain the professional distance her role requires. Her emotional involvement – most notably with Edoardo – leads her to cross institutional boundaries: at one point, she even shelters him in her own home while he is wounded and on the run from the prison. In doing so, she not only violates the rules of the institution she represents but also betrays the very principle of impartiality that should define her position.
In a pivotal confrontation with Commander Massimo, Liz openly admits that she is not as strong as he is and cannot endure the harshness of the environment or the pain generated by the inmates’ stories. Through her, the series sketches a model of female leadership marked by fragility – where empathy, rather than functioning as an ethical strength, becomes vulnerability, and power collapses the moment it allows itself to be permeated by emotion.
Family Ties and Cultural Bonds: When Prison Becomes Freedom
Another key narrative axis concerns the weight of family structures and cultural belonging. Naditza’s story is emblematic: the young Romani woman deliberately chooses to be arrested in order to escape an arranged marriage, imposed by her father with the complicity of her mother, Donka. Her rebellion marks one of the series’ most powerful turning points because it overturns the stereotype of the passive Romani girl, condemned to a preordained fate. Paradoxically, prison becomes for Naditza a space of self-determination – a place that feels freer than her own home.
Her trajectory makes visible the tension between tradition and individual choice. Donka embodies blind adherence to cultural norms (“it’s always been done this way”), while Naditza represents the possibility of resistance and self-redefinition. The series amplifies this conflict in the dramatic escape sequence: her fellow inmates break out to help her avoid the forced marriage, ultimately accepting their return to prison as the lesser constraint. This collective choice transforms the stereotype of the oppressive community into a narrative opportunity to reflect on freedom, cultural bonds, and inclusion.
Conversations
“Interview with Cristiana Farina, creator of Mare Fuori: ‘Those words are mine’”. In d – la Repubblica, July 18, 2023. Interview by Giovanni Audiffredi.
«Because the chance to change – and solidarity itself – are the very essence of Mare Fuori. There is the longed-for second chance, the desire to be absolved; there is hope. And the experience of these emotions helps one grow stronger. I wrote the series because I have always been drawn to the exploration, narration, and introspection of adolescence – that extraordinary age when anything can happen, including making the gravest and most unimaginable mistake. Yet there is still the possibility of recovery, if one gains self-awareness […].
As a child, I watched Sciuscià by Vittorio De Sica. I saw it one morning, in black and white, on television. It struck me deeply. Then, one Roman Sunday, we drove along the Lungotevere, and there were these boys with their arms and legs sticking out from the bars of the juvenile prison. That age must represent the possibility of failure – and of transforming failure into growth. If you have never failed, your life must have been, in some way, flat».
Interview with Elena Capparelli – Director of RaiPlay, conducted as part of the European research project GEMINI-Gender Equality through Media Investigation and New training Insights (CERV-2022-GE).
«It is a successful production both for the stories it tells and for the way it tells them […]. It narrates the lives of young people in a juvenile prison – stories of individuals who, from one day to the next, find themselves living through a dramatic experience, and by the second minute you are already drawn into their fates. There is very effective writing here, very compelling stories, and this world of young people in their twenties, alongside a few central adult figures, needs to rethink the meaning of good in order to desire it – and to redeem themselves from the difficult fate of being locked inside a prison».
Interview with Tommaso Matano – Screenwriter, conducted as part of the European research project GEMINI-Gender Equality through Media Investigation and New training Insights (CERV-2022-GE).
«There’s the relational dynamic of that age, but then there’s also this whole dimension of guilt, of murder, of prison – all these very powerful narrative elements. And then, I think, there’s another aspect: it’s an ‘aspirational’ series. That is, it’s a story built around the ideal of the mare fuori – that you can get out, survive, make it, that there’s a second chance. So it’s a series which, in a historical moment like this, might seem at first glance to dwell in darkness, but in fact always carries this thread of resolution, let’s say, which perhaps is also part of the reason for its success».
Interview with Maddalena Rinaldo – CEO of Cross Productions, conducted as part of the European research project GEMINI-Gender Equality through Media Investigation and New training Insights (CERV-2022-GE).
«Because Mare Fuori suggested this to me: it’s a story that rather bluntly lays bare feelings. It’s, so to speak, almost a ‘scene’ – people constantly shouting their emotions at each other, crying, loving, hating. It’s really the ABC of emotion, and yet it’s precisely what this generation, in my view, struggles to express – except perhaps through a phone, which, of course, is not the same thing».
Business strategies and communication rhetorics
Strategies
The production model of Mare Fuori embodies a deliberate Rai strategy: to make serialized drama a tool capable of reconciling the mission of public service broadcasting with the need to remain competitive in the global market. On one hand, the series retains a strong local anchoring – through its Neapolitan setting, references to the real IPM of Nisida, and its engagement with social and identity-related issues – reaffirming its role as a national narrative closely tied to specific territories and communities. On the other hand, it adopts narrative and stylistic codes (teen drama conventions, musical languages, urban aesthetics) that resonate with international trends, allowing the show to circulate on global streaming platforms without losing its distinctive character.
This dual vocation is reflected in the show’s industrial choices: a calibrated yet competitive budget – around €13,000 per minute in the first season, less than half that of many Netflix productions (source: Cineguru) – and a long-form serialized structure that has already surpassed five seasons and 62 episodes, with a sixth on the way.
As the phenomenon has consolidated, subsequent seasons have benefited from increased resources and ambitions while remaining faithful to the original framework: telling stories of youth and vulnerability through an accessible, recognizable language capable of fostering identification. As Elena Capparelli, Director of RaiPlay, emphasizes, the strength of Mare Fuori does not lie in portraying a universal experience, but in transforming a marginal condition into a narrative that can resonate with a broad and diverse audience.
Cristiana Farina, the creator of Mare Fuori, has stated that she built the series out of direct experience within the juvenile detention center of Nisida. During a summer spent there as a volunteer, she worked with the young inmates on cinema and acting, gathering testimonies and observations that later shaped the show’s imaginative world.
This first-hand fieldwork reveals that Mare Fuori is not merely a television fiction but the outcome of attentive listening and real immersion – a process able to transform lived experiences and personal stories into serialized narrative. The result is a drama that weaves together fidelity to its social context with the creative demands of storytelling.
Communication rhetorics
The promotional strategies accompanying Mare Fuori rely largely on hybrid forms of commercial collaboration that go beyond traditional product placement, extending into local initiatives, communication campaigns, and educational projects that translate the show’s narrative values into concrete practices of training and social inclusion.
The series leverages partnerships with selected brands to expand its cultural impact, transforming storytelling into recognizable experiences and pathways for its audience. At the same time, companies use these collaborations to position themselves as socially responsible actors, aligning with the show’s themes of inclusion and redemption while launching real-world projects to support young people in vulnerable situations.
A particularly emblematic example is the collaboration with Lavazza. Within the series, the brand appears through a “coffee workshop,” imagined as a learning space for the characters: not merely a logo on screen, but an evolved form of plot placement that embeds the idea of professional training as a pathway to social reintegration. In parallel, the company extended this initiative beyond the show, linking it to its international program A Cup of Learning, which offers skills development and job opportunities to young people from marginalized backgrounds. The commercial Un caffè per ricominciare (“A Coffee to Start Again”), featuring the cast of the series, further reinforced this dual dimension, conveying to audiences a rhetoric of inclusion and second chances.
Conversations
“Interview with Cristiana Farina, creator of Mare Fuori: ‘Those words are mine’”. In d – la Repubblica, July 18, 2023. Interview by Giovanni Audiffredi.
«While working on Un posto al sole I came into contact with the juvenile detention center of Nisida. An absolute gold mine for stories. I became friends with the director, Gianluca Guida – an extraordinary person. I spent a summer there as a volunteer with the boys. I taught visual literacy: we watched films, and I had them act out scenes.
I met someone like the character of Viola Torri – a girl who, together with her friends, had killed a lay nun, stabbing her some thirty times. She had a personality disorder. She was deeply magnetic, as narcissists often are. Solid – you could feel she was made of steel. Nothing could shake her, because she felt nothing. Her boyfriend was exactly like Ciro Ricci. He was a boy of extraordinary intelligence who had fully embraced the Camorra logic. He was in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed but had taken the blame for, because as a minor he faced a lighter sentence than the real killer».
Interview with Elena Capparelli – Director of RaiPlay, conducted as part of the European research project GEMINI-Gender Equality through Media Investigation and New training Insights (CERV-2022-GE).
«What certainly prevails are the models – the many models of life that young people today are faced with and that, together with the broader context they inhabit, become stories […]. Then of course, in doing our work we study extensively: research, market data, interviews; we use every tool available, including international ones. Being a public service broadcaster sets you apart in many ways from what others do. We engage with European public broadcasters as part of the EBU».
Circulation and audience responses
Circulation patterns
Circolazione e distribuzione
The success of Mare Fuori is closely tied to its adoption of a hybrid distribution model, which has enabled the series to evolve into a “bridge” product – positioned between the public service mandate and the logics of the international marketplace. By combining linear television with digital platforms, the show progressively expanded its audience, transforming what began as a Rai Due title into a global phenomenon.
The first season (September 2020) premiered on Rai Due with six double-episode primetime broadcasts – effectively a “format test” allowing the public broadcaster to experiment with a teen drama on a channel (Rai Due) explicitly tasked with rejuvenating its audience. The second season (November–December 2021) confirmed this strategy, while introducing a pivotal shift: the first episodes were released in advance on RaiPlay, signaling the move toward a digital-first logic.
The decisive leap in distribution came in June 2022, when Netflix acquired the first two seasons for Italy, granting the series access to a broad, global-facing general audience. From that point onward, the Mare Fuori phenomenon took shape: the first season remained in Netflix Italy’s Top 10 for 17 consecutive weeks, and the second for 18.
Starting with the third season (February 2023), the distribution strategy consolidated: a digital-first release on RaiPlay (six episodes dropped immediately, followed by six more two weeks later) delivered record-breaking numbers – 8 million views within the first 24 hours, nearly 12 million in a single day on February 13 (equivalent to 5.7 million hours watched), and over 105 million views across the month [RaiNews; Annuario della TV]. The subsequent linear broadcast on Rai Due, beginning mid-February, confirmed the show’s ability to thrive across multiple platforms and release windows, engaging diverse audience segments.
The model strengthened further with the fourth season (February 2024): its RaiPlay launch reached 1.13 million views in the first two hours and 2.5 million within twelve hours – an 82% increase over the previous season – even before its linear debut on Rai Due [RaiNews]. The fifth season (March 2025) followed the same trajectory, premiering in two digital-first batches on RaiPlay before its Rai Due broadcast. While it continued to dominate consumption overall, Season 5 marked a slight decline compared with Season 4: during its first nine days, streams were down 28% and viewing hours down 34%, though the gap began to narrow in the following days.
Mare Fuori entered the international market through Beta Film, which has distributed the series in more than 20 countries – including the Nordic region (TV4), Germany (Disney+), Israel (HOT), and Latin America (HBO Max) [BetaFilm]. This global strategy was reinforced in spring 2025 by a landmark deal with Netflix, which acquired all existing seasons, the confirmed sixth season, and the prequel film Io sono Rosa Ricci [Variety].
Awards and Festivals
In 2023, the series received the Nastro d’Argento – Grandi Serie award as “Series of the Year” for its third season. In the same year, at the Ciak d’Oro Serie TV 2023, Mare Fuori 3 won Best Series, while lead actor Massimiliano Caiazzo (Carmine Di Salvo) was honored as Best Lead Actor.
The following year, at the Ciak d’Oro Serie TV 2024, the series was awarded Best Performance in a TV Series.
Beyond its artistic achievements, Mare Fuori has also stood out in the field of rights and merchandising: at the Bologna Licensing Awards 2024, held during the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, it won Best Young Adult Project, recognizing the licensing program developed by Rai Com [Rai Com].
Reception
Mare Fuori reshapes the relationship between serial television and audience practices, evolving into a transmedia phenomenon. Its reception extends far beyond linear viewing on Rai Due or digital streaming platforms, unfolding across a multiplicity of spaces for consumption, appropriation, and creative reworking that cut across digital platforms, cultural genres, and expressive forms.
Transmediality can be read from a dual perspective:
On the production side, Mare Fuori has progressively built a narrative universe that transcends the boundaries of television drama, expanding into new formats and languages. The first step was editorial: alongside the series, the official novel “Mare fuori. Le forme dell’amore” (published by Solferino/Rai Libri) was released, followed by the fanbook “Dentro Mare fuori”, which offers behind-the-scenes insights, images, and in-depth commentary – allowing audiences to continue inhabiting the storyworld beyond the screen.
To the books was added a theatrical project, Mare Fuori. Il musical, directed by Alessandro Siani and written by Cristiana Farina and Maurizio Careddu, which premiered in Naples in 2023. Featuring part of the original cast, the stage production brings the series’ dynamics and characters to life in a new performative language.
The narrative universe further expands with the cinematic spin-off Io sono Rosa Ricci (autumn 2025), a prequel retracing Rosa’s arrival at the juvenile detention center, confirming Rai Fiction and the producers’ intention to broaden the overarching story through autonomous yet coherent works.
On the audience side, Mare Fuori has emerged as a truly generational phenomenon, driven above all by social media.
Between February 1 and 16, 2023, the series generated 11 million social interactions across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, with 1.1 million interactions coming directly from its official accounts (38 posts averaging nearly 30,000 interactions each, and up to 59,000 on Instagram). Of these interactions, 53% occurred on TikTok, followed by 41% on Instagram [Sensemakers].
The success of Mare Fuori is also fueled by the celebritization of its cast, transforming the actors into transmedia figures active across multiple platforms and cultural circuits. Alongside Raiz (Don Salvatore Ricci), already well-known as a musician, stand out Matteo Paolillo (Edoardo Conte) – author and performer of the opening theme song “’O mar for” – and Crazy J, who has twice appeared as a performer at the Sanremo Music Festival.
The cast’s presence at the 74th Sanremo Festival (2024) also became an occasion for civic engagement: the actors performed a monologue written by Matteo Bussola, addressing gender-based violence:
The self-branding strategies of the actors also contribute to shaping a new model of the contemporary youth star system: television fiction becomes a springboard for promoting inclusive narratives around gender issues and for advancing social causes.
Nicolas Maupas, in particular, has become emblematic of a masculinity that is free and fragile, distanced from stereotypical models of dominant virility, able to express vulnerability without losing symbolic strength.
Massimiliano Caiazzo has likewise built his public image around tropes of positive masculinity, positioning himself as an ally of women and a voice against gender-based violence. He has fronted awareness campaigns and performed monologues from Ferite a morte by Serena Dandini, supported by the foundation Una Nessuna Centomila, culminating in a performance with Anna Foglietta at the Arena di Verona in a piece dedicated to psychological gender violence.
Conversations
Interview with Elena Capparelli – Director of RaiPlay, conducted as part of the European research project GEMINI-Gender Equality through Media Investigation and New training Insights (CERV-2022-GE).
« When the success of a piece of content on a platform is disconnected from the traditional television audience, it means people have found their way to it differently – they go to the platform specifically to watch it, not because they are Rai Due viewers. […] On the day we released the second season, there was an extraordinary surge on the platform, something I had never seen in my entire digital career, and that had never been seen before in the European market. We reached 13 million views in a single day; when we released the second episode three or four days later, the numbers went far beyond even my most optimistic expectations».
Interview with Domizia De Rosa – President of Women in Film, Television & Media Italia, conducted as part of the European research project GEMINI-Gender Equality through Media Investigation and New training Insights (CERV-2022-GE).
«They don’t move away from those screens, and of course word of mouth has taken on so many new forms. We don’t really know where the contagion of Mare Fuori truly began; we don’t know who the ‘patient zero’ or ‘patients zero’ were for this kind of content. And that, too, is part of how trends and taste evolve: identifying the first adopter, the ‘patient zero,’ is extremely difficult – especially because Netflix provides very limited data, so it has been impossible to trace exactly what happened».
Interview with Dario Sardelli – Screenwriter, conducted as part of the European research project GEMINI-Gender Equality through Media Investigation and New training Insights (CERV-2022-GE).
«Now everyone wants to make another Mare Fuori. I go talk to producers and they ask me: do you have a Mare Fuori? And I get the feeling that even if you try to reproduce it – to create something along the same lines – young audiences will just run away, looking for something different, something that wasn’t designed to trap them. I think they’re a truly difficult and demanding audience, but also a challenging one for writers. Because you have to try to anticipate where young people’s attention will land in six months, eight months, a year from now […] but I believe that, at its core, the only way to earn their attention is not to chase it, but to work with intellectual honesty, to tell stories that might genuinely interest them».
Italian and foreign press
Italian press
Massimo Scaglioni, “The Mare Fuori Case: The Reasons for Its Success,” Cinematografo, March 14, 2023.
«In the case of Mare Fuori, the series (produced in a format of 12 episodes of 60 minutes each) was envisioned, with foresight by the leadership of Rai Fiction, as a way of diversifying its scripted content portfolio. The first season was scheduled from Wednesday, September 23, 2020, on Rai Due, with two episodes aired back-to-back across six prime-time evenings. Rai Due is the public service channel tasked with ‘rejuvenating’ the Rai audience, and the fiction was designed with precisely this editorial aim. It does not seek to capture a broad, undifferentiated public, but rather to target a specific audience, younger than the average for productions typically designed for Rai Due».
Aldo Grasso, “‘Mare Fuori,’ a Successful Blend of Two Powerful Genres,” Corriere della Sera, February 16, 2023.
«Mare Fuori is perhaps Rai’s first major attempt at making good use of streaming: the series was first offered on RaiPlay in binge-watching mode (so that young audiences could consume it all at once) and only later aired weekly on Rai Due. Of course, distribution strategies alone do not explain its success […] Some argue that Mare Fuori is a kind of ‘Gomorra for good’ (there are even subtitles to help with the denser dialect), a successful blend of two powerful genres: the teen drama and the prison drama – stories about young people inside a ‘total institution’».
Claudia Catalli, ““From Mare Fuori to The Bad Guy: How Women Are Revolutionizing Italian TV Series,” Wired, June 20, 2023.
«Forget the girlfriends, wives, lovers, or sisters of male protagonists. Today, young women are the absolute leads – heroines and antiheroines at the center of the stories told in Italy’s most beloved series, from The Good Mothers to La legge di Lidia Poët, from Mare Fuori to The Bad Guy, from Call My Agent Italia to Tutto chiede salvezza. These are women who defy convention, with sharply defined characters, fully developed personalities, a desire for independence, and a rare determination to rewrite their own stories without depending on or being shaped by the male universe».
Foreign press
Anjali Sharma, “The Sea Beyond Netflix Series Review – A Gritty Dive into Youthful Turmoil and Redemption”, Midgard Times, 25 Aprile 2025.
«If you’re seeking a series that combines the rawness of youth with the complexities of crime and redemption, The Sea Beyond delivers a compelling narrative set against the backdrop of Naples’ juvenile detention center. This Italian drama doesn’t just tell a story; it immerses you in the lives of its characters, making you feel every emotion they experience […] The Sea Beyond manages to strike a balance between drama and authenticity. It doesn’t shy away from depicting the harsh realities faced by its characters, yet it also offers glimpses of hope and the possibility of change. The series doesn’t provide easy answers but instead presents a nuanced exploration of youth, crime, and the human capacity for growth».