Counter Culture

FROM NOVEMBER 12 ONLY ON NETFLIX 

A sharp, grounded Netflix drama, Playmen follows editor Adelina Tattilo as she takes control of a scandal magazine and fights censors, creditors, and bad actors—keeping consent, context, and truth at the centre.

There’s a very specific charge running through Mrs Playmen: that feeling of being inside a newsroom where every headline, phone call, or envelope from the authorities might spell either triumph or disaster. Rather than giving us a single “hero” narrative, the series embraces the logic of the newsroom itself—collective, contested, and combustible. It’s an ensemble piece, and part of its sophistication lies in allowing each character to carry a different facet of Italy’s argument with itself during the 1970s. Moralists, libertines, Fascists, conservatives, feminists, cynics, workers, victims, and opportunists all occupy the same frame, each pulling the story’s moral centre of gravity in a different direction.

This breadth gives Mrs Playmen its richness. Far from being a linear rise-to-power drama, it shows how fragile progress is when surrounded by old systems determined to hold the line.

An ensemble cast shaped by conflict

Carolina Crescentini remains the anchor, playing Adelina Tattilo with that quietly decisive energy of someone who has had to learn her authority the hard way. But the show only works because she is surrounded by a full constellation of characters, each of whom personifies a pressure point of the time.

Francesco Colella’s Saro Balsamo—the husband who appoints her Editor in Chief and then abandons her to avoid legal consequences —represents the vanishing patriarch: all authority in the abstract, none in the moment of need. His storyline cuts straight into the hypocrisy of state “moral guardianship”: the same authorities who eagerly hunt for obscenity in magazines shrug at his domestic abuse. By including him, the show broadens its canvas from editorial battles to the broader culture of male impunity.

Filippo Nigro’s Chartroux, the closeted gay, intellectual (former?) Fascist: a fixer who keeps things functioning, gives the series ballast.

Giuseppe Maggio’s Luigi Poggi, the reckless and ambitious photographer, becomes the exhibition of what happens when creative aspiration slides into exploitation. Francesca Colucci’s Elsa, the young woman betrayed by Poggi’s misuse of her trust, becomes the human core of the show.

But the surrounding ensemble matters just as much:

A feminist critic, Marta Vassalli (portrayed by Elena Radonicich), adds another layer. She is fiercely opposed to Playmen on principle—yet respects Adelina as a woman surviving in a man’s world. Their exchanges are some of the best in the series: tense, challenging, thoughtful. Marta isn’t an antagonist; she’s the moral conscience reminding the viewer that liberation and exploitation often travel in dangerously close company.

This wider cast turns the series into a mosaic—one in which every character represents the Italy Adelina is pushed to navigate.

A world built on pressure

The structure remains the same: we begin in 1975, with Adelina celebrated for reshaping Italy’s conversation, before being yanked back to 1970 to watch her endure the trenches that made that moment possible. But the ensemble deepens the effect. Each secondary character adds their own form of pressure—legal, personal, ideological, or emotional.

Few shows have captured the mechanics of censorship so accurately. Here we see repression not as a dramatic knock on the door but as the dull throb of bureaucracy—seizures, missing shipments, mysterious delays in distribution. What’s powerful is how the ensemble cast mirrors these pressures: each character is another system Adelina must navigate, negotiate with, or resist.

The series also evokes the look and feel of the early to mid‑1970s, the period in which most of the story unfolds exceptionally well. The production nails the era’s visual texture — the cars, the fashion, and the interiors all feel convincingly of their time — from wood‑paneled living rooms and patterned upholstery to period‑correct tailoring, hairstyles and dashboard layouts. Those details do more than decorate the set: they ground the characters and their choices, making the world feel lived‑in and historically specific while quietly amplifying the drama.

Consent as the real battleground

The Poggi–Elsa storyline still sits at the heart of Playmen, but with the expanded cast, the show creates a fuller map of how consent is eroded across the culture.

Chartroux’s struggle with his sexuality adds another dimension, illustrating how the denial of consent (in all its forms—sexual, economic, political) is not isolated but part of a broad pattern of silencing and control.

Adelina’s response is the moral hinge: she insists on context. She refuses to treat women’s bodies as décor or women’s pain as currency. In an industry built on sensation, her commitment to meaning becomes a kind of rebellion. Though at times she falters or mis-steps.

Seven episodes of building—and buying—freedom

The expanded cast makes Adelina’s victories feel earned. She’s not fighting a single antagonist but a culture: the Church, the police, weak men, predatory men, ideological opponents, victims in need of care, and allies who are vulnerable in their own ways.

The effect is cumulative. Each episode broadens the stakes. Each character contributes to the sense that freedom—editorial or personal—is never given; it is constructed, bargained for, and defended daily.

Verdict

Mrs Playmen becomes far more than a period drama. It’s a story about how societies police desire and punish honesty. It’s about who gets to define “public morality” and whose suffering is quietly excluded from that definition. And it’s about the possibility of decency within an indecent system.

The ensemble cast elevates the series: Crescentini leads with quiet steel; Colella embodies the negative partriachal male; Nigro steadies the ship; Maggio exposes the dangers of unchecked ambition; Radonicich’s feminist critic keeps the questions sharp.

Through all of this, the show returns to one principle—Adelina’s principle:

Run the picture. Tell the truth.

In 1970s Italy, that was radical.
In many ways, it still is.

Reviewed by Maria Camara