Stylish, succinct and seemingly perfectly on top of things, Detective Chief Elena Zonin has secrets. For two decades, she’s escaped her home city of Venice to establish her crime-hunting career in the bustling capital of Rome.
Zonin is an expert in cyber crime and offences against minors. Her particular specialty is investigating children who have disappeared, so when a boy’s body – Gilberto – is found in Venice’s waterways, Zonin is called upon to investigate what has happened.
Even as Zonin is making headway on the case, and Gilberto’s story unravels through the clues, there is an emerging threat to the life of a boy, not so different to Gilberto, in Treviso. Angelo is engaged in an online chat via his mobile phone, though the young girl he thinks he’s building a friendship with may prove to be a bait. The clock is ticking: will Zonin trace Gilberto’s killers in time to prevent Angelo’s disappearance?
Behind new series Don't Leave Me are the same Italian crime drama maestros who created the addictively bleak , and Incastrati, namely Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli. The writing is both intelligent and intuitive, never trying to outsmart the audience but, mercifully, not dumbing down the complexities of socio-political roots that have enabled networks of monsters to flourish under the photogenic tourist meccas of Venice and Rome.
Vittoria Puccini stars as Detective Chief Elena Zonin in ‘Don’t Leave Me’. Source: RAI/Paypermoon
For lovers of Italian fiction and non-fiction, the chiaroscuro contrasting of shadows and illumination, violence and ecstasy will be a familiar palette. Fans of crime authors Donna Leon, Andrea Camilleri and Mario Puzo will find the thrilling, feral aspects of human nature and the stylish, romantic and devoted detectives appealingly reminiscent of their beloved fictional heroes (and anti-heroes).
Readers, like myself, who both adore and fear the haunting journalism and melancholic stories of the Italian working class written by author Anna Maria Ortese (and later, Oriana Fallaci) will find the unearthing of truth and violence in a historically beautiful, doomed city provides intellectual and emotional sustenance well beyond each episode.
Alessandro Roja co-stars as homicide detective, Daniele Vianello in ‘Don’t Leave Me’. Source: RAI/Paypermoon
This is an Italian series, so there is, of course, food, sex and fashion. It’s not a tourist advertisement, nor Italian Vogue, though Zonin is subtly glamorous, and the gothic beauty of Venice is darkly delicious, however deadly its depths.
Venice promises both professional and personal battles for Zonin (Vittoria Puccini). Being drawn back to the landscape of her youth is more confronting than she’d anticipated, not least because of the presence of her ex-lover Daniele Vianello (Alessandro Roja), Head of Homicide.
It is not only the crimes in this series that are complex. Daniele has married Zonin’s best friend, Giulia (Sarah Felderbaum), and there is a tangible, uneasy frisson between the three from their first reunion. As soap opera-ish as this sounds, over the entire eight episodes it avoids soapy melodrama, in no small part due to Fasoli and Ravagli’s exceptional, mature writing and the discerning casting of established TV actors.
Ex-lovers, now co-workers, Elena and Daniele. Source: RAI/Paypermoon
While Roja has performed in everything from crime and family drama through to music videos, Puccini became famed for her role in historical drama Elisa di Rivombrosa, before establishing a career in Italian crime dramas on film and television, including The Fugitive.
In Don’t Leave Me, Puccini has taken on history of an altogether different nature. A history that has merged with the present day in the most abstemious way. Migrants, expatriates, drugs and human trafficking, organised crime and cartels are no secret in Italy, or Europe more generally. The ease of access to social media has only exacerbated the avenues of crime and abuse in recent years, though.
Elena with best friend, and Daniele’s wife, Giulia (Sarah Felderbaum). Source: RAI/Paypermoon
According to Italian press agency ANSA, , two thirds of whom are foreign nationals. By late May, on International Missing Children’s Day, the Italian Government announced that 3,589 children have disappeared in Italy this year alone.
of trafficking last year, over a third being (mostly female) minors. This is, they report in ‘Little Invisible Slaves’, more than triple the number of 15 years ago.
As we discover from the first episode, children and adults are entangled in deceitful social media relationships that, far from being purely online dalliances, are malevolent and strategic in nature. Don’t Leave Me is not easy viewing, nor forgettable and sweetly superficial.
The investigation continues into the nights. Source: RAI / Paypermoon
It is a gritty, intellectual and emotional thriller informed by truth, and in a world full of distractions, acknowledging truths is vital to addressing them on an international scale. Draw back the veil and embrace the intricate shadow play between humans, cities and the interminable creep of the digital universe into daily life.
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