What a disappointment Call My Agent - Italy: Sky's third season gets lost along the way

As a viewer of a fair number of Rai fiction series, I never thought I'd encounter the commercial insertion of a coffee brand in a series more insistent and graceless than those that for years entertained me, let's say, in Imma Tataranni and Rocco Schiavone. I was guilty of a great and, for me, uncharacteristic naivety, because it only took watching the first coffee break of Call My Agent - Italy 3 to re-evaluate Rai's work and understand that, unfortunately, a certain approach that had made the Italian version of a French serial hit a pleasant surprise had now vanished. Over the course of the subsequent five episodes that make up the third season of the Sky series, countless and specious takes with the paper cup (clearly empty) in the hands of the CMA workers followed, while the insertion of more and more insistent brands almost (almost) faded into the background in the face of the blatant evidence of lost magic and a tainted product.

Guest stars aren't what they used to be, not even in Call My Agent

How it happened is quite simple to explain: after a truly brilliant start, albeit with a “very Italian” and gentler approach and vibe compared to its French counterpart, Call My Agent simply stopped moving at the same level. There is nothing in the entire season number 3, not even a single scene that comes close to the amused irreverence of the episode with a bored Paolo Sorrentino or the one with Pierfrancesco Favino unable to get out of his Che Guevara character from the first season. The caliber of the guest stars – the backbone of the show based precisely on the presence of famous people playing exaggerated versions of themselves – has dropped significantly, not only in terms of name recognition but also in terms of their acting quality. The level of the stories involving these names also declines, completely losing the “acidic” vein of the original French series: the Italian version was never truly mean and never asked one of its guests to put themselves in a ridiculous, unpleasant, or petty position, as happens very often in the four seasons of the series produced by France 2, always demonstrating great bite.

However, the stories of the third Italian season are a triumph of unbearable banality and “let's all be friends,” moreover seasoned with an inexplicable, recurring ode to nepotism that leaves one bewildered. At least Pierpa's character should get his well-deserved, cruel revenge after spending the season enduring what unfortunately happens every day in offices and agencies: that the newcomer overtakes you, that the famous mother and daughter have more and more opportunities to land a part together. It's not a problem that it happens: Call My Agent exists precisely to highlight the absurdities of the entertainment world in a comedic key. The problem is when the series has no comment to make about it, other than a benevolent smile.

With Elvira, the Call My Agent that worked also died

At the start of the season, there's a thrill when Lea's character (Sara Drago) goes out for an evening that ends in a ménage à trois, leading this writer to make a note to praise the lightness with which the series holds together the super romantic Gabriele (Maurizio Lastrico) who keeps his engagement ring in his pocket for episodes and episodes, the stiff Vittorio (Michele Di Mauro) who tries to restart after his divorce, and indeed the more unconventional Lea. However, the ring becomes a tedious running gag, Vittorio is put on hold because there are no ideas on how to evolve the character, and the narrative repercussions of Lea's “experimental” night take such a turn that I decisively crossed out the note I had made. The American option is then truly inconsistent and ultimately replicates, in an uninspired way, what was already seen in the second season with the internal corporate dynamics. The only truly genuine and well-crafted moment of this third block of episodes is the grand opening, in which the series addresses the passing of actress Marzia Ubaldi, also killing off her fictional counterpart Elvira Bo and starting from there.

This is to say how truly nothing works in this third season. As for why, it's less simple to be certain, but I feel I can make two hypotheses. The first is that there may have been a contraction of budget or allure: there are no names at the level of those from the first two seasons anywhere, and they make do in this sense. While there has always been a tendency to give space to Sky's in-house talents, at this point in its evolution, the series transforms into blatant self-promotion of its current and immediate future projects, forcibly inserting talents linked to projects like the series about 883 (which could be a nice easter egg) but with truly atrocious pretexts.

The lowest point is the episode where the reboot of Romanzo Criminale is filmed, which returns with a truly mercenary and bizarre plot about which the series makes not an ounce of irony, confirming that it has indeed emptied itself of its very meaning. What could be a fun episode with actors being convinced to make a fake remake for the anniversary of the hit that viewers are nostalgic for (with them reading scripts and despairing over the nonsense they have to say to cash the check) – in other words, a Call My Agent-style plot – becomes an unrealistic clash with a “German director” who prefers three infinitely arrogant and self-important youngsters who will be the new generation of Roman criminals on the small screen. Incidentally, the three recall, in dynamics and attitudes, the protagonists of another Sky series, Blocco 181, and the truly, truly, truly tragic thing is that this resemblance was what made me laugh the most in the entire episode and it was absolutely not intentional.

Similarly weak are the storylines of Stefania Sandrelli who wants to work with a young director, a Golden Lion winner at Venice, who holds a grudge against her due to a misunderstanding; the one with Miriam Leone who doesn't want to play mother roles after returning from pregnancy (without an ounce of irony about the fact that, in reality, her first post-pregnancy role in cinema was Amata, the story of a woman who desperately wants a child). The predictable story of Ficarra and Picone who argue because Hollywood only wants one of them for a blockbuster would have a chance if there were some intention to actually make us believe this argument. The episode about Luca Argentero, however, is merciless in comparison to the more or less equivalent one of the aforementioned Favino, both in terms of writing and in terms of a guest capable of adding value to the episode by putting themselves out there.