Italian teen drama on Netflix Minerva Academy It takes viewers inside a military high school in Naples, where discipline, hierarchy and tradition collide with everything that normally comes with a teenager. What starts out as a fairly familiar school drama becomes more interesting and darker across its eight episodes.

Almost military schools The perfect setting for teen drama. Take teenagers who are already trying to understand who they are, put them inside an institution built on discipline, hierarchy, and obedience, and then tell them when to wake up, what to wear, and how to behave. Relationships between students of different years are forbidden, phones and civilian clothes have disappeared, and mistakes can lead to serious consequences.

Minerva Academy She has plenty of material to work with before the mystery begins.

The fictional Minerva is a military high school in Naples, inspired by a very small part of the Italian education system. Italy has four military high schools, where students complete the last three years of high school along with military training and discipline. The writers researched these institutions through interviews and field research while developing the series.

in the beginning, Minerva It makes good use of everything we expect from this environment. Punishment exercises, jousting, competitions, inspections, senior students exercising authority over newcomers, and traditions that no one is particularly encouraged to question, fill the halls.

There is also a culture of “nonnismo,” a culture of hazing that can arise when a hierarchy gives older students power over younger students. The series explores the line between discipline and humiliation, between building resilience and demanding obedience, simply because that’s the way things have always been done. Minerva’s respect for hierarchy can turn into annoyance and her sense of belonging into something much more dangerous.

And then someone arrives who is quite willing to question it.

Cristiana Capotondi plays Laura Canali, the new history and philosophy teacher, a civilian who seems almost comically out of place inside Minerva. She listens to students, challenges decisions, and doesn’t accept tradition as a good enough reason to keep doing something.

Canali is not the only woman who opposes Old Minerva. Major Teresa Bonaiuto (Irene Maiorino), the school’s vice-captain, respects its rules but wants to leave behind the traditions that keep the school trapped in its past. She and Kanali challenge the establishment in very different ways.

But at its core, Minerva is a teen drama. We see the school largely through three first-year students: Salvo (Ciro Minopoli), Vincenzo (Biagio Venditti), and Camilla (Margherita Buoncristiani).

Salvo has the biggest reason to be there. He grew up in a group home, where Francesco was essentially his older brother. Francesco entered Minerva hoping to build a better future, and then disappeared. No one seems able to give Salvo the answers he needs, so he follows him to school to find them himself.

This mystery extends across the eight episodes. What happened to Francesco? Why did he disappear? How much does Minerva know?

The mystery gives the season a continuous story while individual episodes revolve around the rhythms and challenges of school life, from war day and dueling to competitions and weekend break.

Camilla arrives for completely different reasons. She’s the rich, rebellious teenager whose father sends her to a place that might “make her right.” On paper, she’s one of the biggest stereotypes in the series, but her strength and values ​​gradually emerge beneath that initial attitude.

Vincenzo actually wants to be there, following in his father’s footsteps; His father, Minerva, also attended. His story becomes more emotional as his father’s cancer worsens, while he begins a relationship with Paola (Beatrice Savignani), Commander Giordano’s rebellious daughter.

The students also fall in love, though in forbidden relationships, and another relationship crosses a more troubling line between teacher and student.

If you had asked me midway through the season, I probably would have answered Minerva Academy It was just a good teen drama. Entertaining, well-written, and easy to watch, but full of characters and themes we’ve seen before. The rebellious rich girl, the troubled boy from a difficult background, the son crushed by his father’s expectations, the cruel military establishment, the teacher determined to turn things around; But then the second half gets deeper.

Some of these stereotypes are starting to look less like shortcuts as the series shows us where these behaviors come from. Problems become heavier and more real. The characters change over the eight episodes, sometimes for the better and sometimes because we finally understand something about them that wasn’t initially clear. This applies to adults as much as it applies to teenagers.

Commander Achille Giordano (Massimiliano Gallo) is perhaps the best example. He runs Minerva with absolute faith in discipline and tradition, but he also raises Diego and Paula after their mother abandons the family. He served in Afghanistan when his children were very young, missing out on part of their childhood before eventually raising them himself.

His growing relationship with Canali is easy to root for because she sees a side of him that doesn’t always come out when he’s Commander Giordano. At the same time, the series never makes it easy to forget how difficult he is with his children, especially Diego.

Giordano believes toughness will protect his son and prepare him for the future. Watching this belief conflict with what Diego actually needs becomes one of the most powerful parts of the season. There are moments when you understand the father and still hate what he does. Other times, his instinct to protect Diego is in direct conflict with the military values ​​he spends so much time defending.

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Best player: Massimiliano Gallo and Simone Cecchi

The strongest performances come from Massimiliano Gallo and Simone Cecchi as Achille and Diego Giordano.

Italian audiences will already know Gallo from everything from heavy dramas to lighter soap operas such as Emma Tatarani – Public Prosecution and Vincenzo Malinconico, Failure Assistant. Here, he plays a man who is both a leader and a father, and the two roles don’t always fit together.

Secce has the most overtly emotional side in that relationship. Diego is 18 years old, confused about love, desperate for his father’s approval, and still carrying the scars of his mother’s abandonment.

Together, Gallo and Sexy perform Minerva Her best relationship. Never doubt that Achilles loves his son. The problem is that loving Diego doesn’t necessarily mean he understands him.

Minerva wants to transform teenagers into stronger versions of themselves. But who can decide what “stronger” means?

The writers deliberately built the series around this contradiction. Schooling teaches teamwork and can erase some of the social and economic differences between students, while punishing weakness and limiting personal freedom. Teenagers are at an age when most people discover themselves by questioning authority, and Minerva asks them to do almost the opposite.

This is the place Minerva Academy It becomes more interesting. It is not necessary to tell us that every imitation is bad or that every disciplinary action is harsh. It shows what happens when rules become more important than the people they are supposed to help.

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He watches Minerva Academy On Netflix if you want

Mary Forey (The sea beyond) is perhaps the most obvious comparison, especially with Silvestrini behind the camera again.

Don’t go into this expecting something lighthearted Crew girl, I’ve never done that before or My Life with Walter Beuysalso. There is romance and plenty of teen drama, however Minerva It deals with sex, nudity, violence, harassment, grief and abuse of power.

If I had to put it somewhere on the Netflix teen drama spectrum, it’s much closer to the dark area 13 reasons whythough it doesn’t get quite as dark. There’s still enough soap, romance, and traditional school drama to keep the season from becoming relentlessly heavy.

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Judgment

Minerva Academy He takes time to show what he really wants to be. The first few episodes are good but familiar, with characters and stories we’ve seen in other teen dramas. But as the season goes on, it gets stronger and starts delving deeper into these characters and their problems.

The mystery surrounding Francesco gives you a reason to keep watching, but it’s not the most interesting part of it Minerva. Relationships, especially the increasingly complicated ones between Giordano and Diego.

Some characters start out as stereotypes we’ve seen many times before, however Minerva Academy It gets better as it continues. The second half gets darker and deals with more serious issues, which keeps it from feeling like just another teen drama on Netflix.