Tag: Petra

“Petra” Season 2 – TV Series Review

A scene from the Italian TV crime series “Petra” Season 2. Courtesy of MHz Choice

It’s been three years since I reviewed the earlier episodes of the entertaining Italian procedural, “Petra.” This round not only provides a pleasant return to its picturesque Genoa setting, but gives us an engaging evolution of the eponymous star. Here’s the usual refresher link: https://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2022/11/petra-tv-series-review/

We rejoin Petra and Antonio after they’ve been on a long (by US standards) vacation. She stayed home alone with her pet tarantula – as would, of course, be her wont. He indulged in the uncharacteristic luxury of a long cruise, meeting a woman he adored (Beatrice, played by Manuela Mandracchia). But middle-aged shlub that he is, Antonio felt under-qualified to keep it going on land, since she was one of the VERY wealthy elite of the community. The class gap seemed to bother him, far more than her.

A more significant change manifests in Petra. She’s finally unpacked all those cartons from her move and filled that drab apartment with nice furnishings. Yet there’s still no artwork adorning the institutional gray walls. Baby steps towards normalcy. She’s opened up her personality appreciably, smiling and joking more than before. She’s still relationship-averse, assuming anything serious would end badly… again.

This second season has more heart, with greater emphasis on character development and personal story arcs, romantic and otherwise. Besides the spider, Petra continues another idiosyncrasy that fans of our “Quincy” series will recognize – keeping a memento from the clues at the end of each solved case.

But now to address the main course – the murders to be solved. As before, each 90-minute episode addresses new crimes, so bingeing isn’t as important for following the proceedings. In the first, a guy she meets from the web for a “zipless… shall we say, boink” turns up the next day as the season’s first murder victim. She keeps that one-nighter a secret for a while, so she’ll be allowed to stay on the case. It turns out that he was married with two kids and a complex set of personal and business activities, leaving a whole lotta motives and possible murderers to sort through. The second episode begins with a homeless guy in an alley being killed by a bullet, then brutally kicked by skinheads. Are those loathsome louts the culprits? Or was there more in the man’s pre-destitution life that caused his demise, along with others that followed?

The third episode begins with the murder of a dude in a jester costume during the colorful festivities of Carnival. Since everyone frolicking in the crowded street was in costume, ID’ing the killer wasn’t helped much by footage from surrounding street cams. The solution had to be extracted from old business with old friends/frenemies as well as recent events. The last episode revolved around sex trafficking and prostitution – mainly affecting the lives of minors.

Though there are moments of levity along the way, these are all handled as dramas, without the comedy side of other Italian favorites like “Detective Montalbano,” “Makari” or “Monterossi.” Three of the four cases were harder to figure out than one. It would be interesting to know which episode any of you find to be the weakest mystery link in the chain. Perhaps your mileage will vary.

What I’d previously described as a miniseries turned out to be two four-episode seasons that end in a satisfactory place for most of the principals (i.e. no cliffhangers), but leaves the door open for a third season. Since this quartet aired abroad in 2023, which was three years after the first foursome, it’s quite possible that more will follow. Fine with me if that’s the way the renewal winds blow.

“Petra” Season Two, mostly in Italian with English subtitles, begins streaming on MHz Choice starting Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

“Petra” – TV Series Review

Paola Cortellesi as Petra, in the Italian crime drama “Petra.” Courtesy of MHzChoice

The title of “Petra” refers to the name of the lead character in this Italian procedural TV series, Petra Delicado (Paola Cortellesi). She’s a lawyer who became a cop, though more of a desk jockey than a case-working detective. When circumstances in her Genoa department thrust her into the field for a series of ritualized rapes, she rises to the challenge, despite having almost no discernible personality, as further evidenced by her drab gray apartment with stacks of unpacked boxes to match. Even so, tough and smart is a good place to start. She’s paired with an older, street-wise subordinate, Antonio (Andrea Pennachi), who is as reactive to the emotional elements of their work as she is averse.

In the first two of the eight episodes comprising this miniseries made available for review, the pair deal with crimes and a raft of personal issues, including romantic prospects for both – not with each other. The 90-minute stories are well-written, with more stimulation for the intellect than the gut, as moments of cop-on-perp action are sparse and brief. But the direction includes lovely shots of the city and area, including some aerial views in several transition scenes that are more artistic than usual for TV productions. Same for the cool, tone-setting animations before the opening titles.

It’s hard to project how the other six episodes will turn out from this limited sample but so far, the stories are solid and the characters are becoming more interesting, individually and as a team, as they progress. Petra’s name is oddly – and likely not by coincidence – oxymoronic, since it loosely means something like “fragile rock.” That encompasses her flat affect which suggests the high-functioning end of the Autism spectrum, with an underlying vulnerability that is likely to continue thawing as we learn more of the backstories for her and Antonio. Both leads do well in establishing flawed, human-scale protagonists we can root for.

“Petra,” mostly in Italian with English subtitles, streams all eight episodes on MHzChoice starting Nov. 8.

RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars