Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In the fourth and final season of My Brilliant Friend, HBO-Rai’s monumental adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s sprawling quadrilogy, Lila declares: “Only in bad novels do characters say the right thing at the right time.” And the same goes for TV, where bad choices, bad taste in men and bad behaviour keep viewers coming back for more. The fiery, obdurate Lila and the flaky, often infuriating Elena both share these traits in spades. Season three ended with Elena (Margherita Mazzucco) in the stifling confines of an aeroplane lavatory. Weepy and giddy as she flew towards a new life with the sophisticated but caddish Nino, she looked at herself in the mirror only to see Alba Rohrwacher staring back at her — her older self, now a successful writer. This unnerving moment was clearly meant to prepare viewers for the cast changes to come, with Rohrwacher’s Elena becoming an edgier, more complex and not particularly likeable character. Lila, now played by Irene Maiorino, has always been sharp edged and sharp tongued, but season four consolidates her as decent and honest, in contrast to her friend. Nino’s puppyish good looks have morphed into the more weathered features of Fabrizio Gifuni. Playing opposite the 45-year-old Rohrwacher, he no longer appears to be Elena’s peer but from another generation altogether.It is not just the cast that has changed. New director Laura Bispuri keeps the camera up close and personal. While the action covers vast swaths of Italy and beyond, she stays mostly within the confines of domestic environments to show that Elena’s world, which should be expanding as her fame and maturity grow, instead remains trapped by the constraints of a bourgeois marriage, motherhood and her misguided love for Nino.The set design benefits from attention detail. The Rione neighbourhood of Naples, so desolate and monochrome in the first season, now has depth and colour. And when Elena visits her ex-husband Pietro in hospital, his pyjamas match the hospital walls, and the shade is picked out in Elena’s sweater, which in turn matches the palette of the autumnal scene outside the window. In this Italy, even the 1970s are aesthetically pleasing.Less lovely are some of the sociopolitical upheavals taking place. The series picks up on the rise of Silvio Berlusconi, as well as broader political corruption, and real-life events, such as the 1980 Irpinia earthquake are incorporated. But these are often mere backdrops to the personal dramas in the women’s lives. However much you might want to view the series as a paean to feminism or friendship, or as a potted history of modern Italy, it is at heart a soap opera, albeit a finely acted and crafted one. Episodes end in cliffhangers, phones ring with devastating news at just the right moment, and characters are murdered, disappear, have affairs and keep terrible secrets.Fans of the previous seasons will not be disappointed. The series, like the characters, has matured and appears richer, both in subject matter and style. Characters from season one are revisited 30 odd years later, their lives newly intertwined with Elena’s. Old scores are settled and some loves briefly rekindled, all of the storylines neatly tied up. And in the closing chapter, after all the drama and bitterness, the viewer is left with a sense of closure and hope after being taken on a walk down memory lane back to the girls’ childhood and that very first episode.★★★★☆On Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK and on Max in the US now
