The Wall Street Journal: Elena Ferrante’s ‘My Brilliant Friend’ Comes to HBO

To adapt the novel for the screen, producers headed to southern Italy and enlisted Neapolitan-speaking actresses, an elaborate set and thousands of extras

On The Wall Street Journal

Ellen Gamerman – Nov 7, 2018

The new television adaptation of “My Brilliant Friend” attempts above all to re-create the story as readers imagined it.

The screen version of Elena Ferrante’s best-selling novel, the first in her four-book Neapolitan series, will air on HBO in eight one-hour episodes starting Nov. 18. The story follows the complicated friendship between two girls, Elena and Lila, who meet at a Naples school in the 1950s.