Stream It Or Skip It?

We’re always happy when teen shows that show teens doing “normal” teen things hit the air, mainly because they’re refreshing in the face of endless shows that have teens partying, having sex and being more adult than the show’s adults. A new series from Italy fits the more “clean cut” teen show category, with plenty of well-drawn characters we want to follow.

RIV4LRIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman walks towards a classroom. The teacher tells his class that the principal is coming to talk to them. The principal tells them that she knows a vandal nicknamed “Wally” is in the class, and if someone doesn’t admit to being that vandal, the entire class will fail for the school year.

The Gist: “FOUR MONTHS EARLIER.” Terry (Kartika Malavasi) has moved to Pisa from Rome because her mother got a promotion at work. She hates that she had no say in the move, and she starts to rebel by playing music so loudly that their downstairs neighbor comes up to complain.

When she gets to her new school, though, she immediately notices Claudio (Samuele Carrino), who is being congratulated by classmates in the school courtyard. It seems that he’s largely responsible for getting a new pitch installed at the school, for a soccer tournament between Pisa middle schools that has been going on for 30 years. Claudio’s best friend Dario (Edoardo Miulli), spotting a new cute girl, makes a beeline to Terry to introduce himself. He also introduces Claudio, his brother Luca (Lorenzo Ciamei) and their friend Sabrina (Eugenia Cableri). Sabrina already dislikes Terry because they are both top of their class in rhythmic gymnastics.

These are the cool kids in class, and they call themselves “The Insiders.” Claudio seems to be the class leader, and his classmates seem to defer to him on all big decisions, including who will be on the team for the tournament. It helps that his father, who is working in Dubai on a massive skyscraper project, put in most of the money for the new pitch.

But Terry is the type of kid who doesn’t like to be pigeonholed into a clique. She also befriends the class outcasts: Mariza (Melissa Di Pasca), who is only talked to for answers to schoolwork; Alessio (Joseph Figueroa), whom has been deemed a liar by the Insiders; and Paolo (Duccio Orlando), the son of the school’s strict principal, who is seen as a snitch.

With her birthday coming up, Claudio says he’ll organize a party and invite the class. But when Terry finds out that only the “Insiders” have been invited, she goes against Claudio and invites everyone. Claudio retaliates by telling the “Insiders” to bail. So Terry tells Mariza, Alessio and Paolo that they’re going to create a new group: The Outsiders.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? RIV4LRIES is from most of the same team that created the similarly-named teen drama DI4RIES.

Our Take: RIV4LRIES is a mostly harmless teen drama that, like its cousin series DI4RIES, is about middle schoolers doing middle school things. This time around, though, the story is more built around how cliques split up a class, and how they come together thanks to Terry and, as we find out, a bit of an infrastructure problem.

Kartika Malavasi does a good job of showing how Terry is one of those people that every middle and high school class has; she’s a person who doesn’t care about belonging to a clique and makes friends across the school’s social strata. She’s also not afraid of making waves despite being the “new kid,” and takes everyone on a personal level, not caring how “cool” or “uncool” they’ve been deemed by someone else.

We’re definitely more interested in the “Outsiders” Terry befriends than the “Insiders,” mainly because creator Simona Ercolani and her writers have given them some interesting elements of backstory. Mariza, for instance, has created an app that is supposed to read a person’s emotions, likely via body language and facial expressions. This means that she’s not only a genius, but may also be neurodivergent. Alessio has been cast out of the inner social circle because he’s been perceived as a liar; Paolo is perceived as a snitch, but we bet that he’s as annoyed by his mother, the principal, as everyone else is.

All of those tidbits of backstory are way more interesting than anything we saw from the Insiders; the only one that really got any backstory was Claudio, who has a “rich and popular kid is actually lonely because his parents are never around” storyline that we’ve seen a million times. Let’s hope that Dario, Luca and Sabrina get a little less generic as the series goes along.

What Age Group Is This For?: We think kids 10 and up will enjoy the show.

Parting Shot: When Terry brings in cake and soda for the class to celebrate her birthday, a mess ensues; when the principal comes in and asks who did it, Terry volunteers, even though Claudio caused the mess.

Sleeper Star: We like Melissa Di Pasca as Mariza, mainly because we always side with the smart, creative kids in any teen story.

Most Pilot-y Line: Like in DI4RIES, characters break the fourth wall and address the audience directly. In the first episode, both Terry and Claudio do it, with no narrative rhyme or reason why. Also, like in DI4RIES, most of these supposed middle schoolers look like they’re 16.

Our Call: STREAM IT. As we said, RIV4LRIES is pretty harmless teen fare, and we’re always happy when we see teens doing things that don’t involve anything you might see in Euphoria.

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.