‘Tis the season for romantic holiday stories, and we here in the States aren’t the only ones who want to tell them. A new Netflix comedy from Italy tells a classic romantic holiday tale, one that would have looked right at home on the Hallmark Channel (or, this year, CBS). In fact, it’s a remake of a Netflix holiday series from Norway, showing that schmaltzy holiday romance is a universal concept.
I HATE CHRISTMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Christmas season in Venice, Italy. A gondola carrying a nativity scene is paddled down a canal. Then the whole thing rewinds, a woman sits down as her phone records her and says, “I hate Christmas.”
The Gist: Why does the 30-year-old Gianna (Pilar Fogliati) hate Christmas? Because she’s the only member of her family who is single and without children, and it seems like every holiday season since she broke up with her ex three years ago, she’s been grilled about when she’s going to get married and start cranking out kids. Her mother Marta (Sabrina Paravicini) even gives her a not-so-subtle hint by sitting her between her brother’s toddler twins at the family table.
She recounts the last 12 hours, where she’s hanging out with her sister Margherita (Fiorenza Pieri) and friends Titti (Beatrice Arnera) and Caterina (Cecilia Bertozzi), who fight over a sprig of mistletoe in the woods. Then, at a church performance by her niece, Gianna’s ex shows up, and Margherita finds out that he has a wife and kid now. Even then, Margherita discounts that Gianni is fulfilled in her job as a nurse and just assumes she wants a family. Then, at dinner, she gets peppered by inquiries into her single status so much that she decides to say that she has a boyfriend, and that she’ll bring him home for Christmas… in 24 days.
So now Gianni has to find a boyfriend in just over 3 weeks. Not just a “fake date,” but actually meet someone and have enough of a connection to even consider him her boyfriend. There are candidates, like Umberto (Glen Blackhall), a new doctor at the hospital, who will work a double shift with Gianni on Christmas, because they’re both single. She tries to find a man in a “grilling and marinating” class after she sees an ab-laden man put out an electrical fire with his shirt, saying he learned it in such a class. She finds, though, that the men are more serious about the grilling and marinating than she bargained for.
However, outside the building where the class is, she does meet Nicola (Giovanni Anzaldo), whom she assumed was in the class but finds out he teaches in the building. It’s a brief encounter, but gives her hope.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? I Hate Christmas (Original title: Odio Il Natale) is based on the Norwegian Netflix series Home For Christmas, right down to the scene where the single protagonist sits between her brother’s toddlers.
Our Take: I Hate Christmas is an ostensibly harmless and almost sweet holiday tale. If we didn’t know that it was based on that two-season Norwegian series we cited above, we would say that the story could have neatly been packaged as a holiday film on the Hallmark Channel. But it seems like there’s more than enough story elements for writer Elena Bucaccio to throw in to get this story across the six-episode finish line and beyond.
One of the things a viewer has to get past is the old-fashioned notion that the beautiful Gianna, who seems completely content with her single life and doesn’t need a man to define it, still gets negative attention from friends and family over her single status. In the scene in the woods with her sister and friends, they openly laugh at the prospect that she’ll find someone to kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas. Why does that seem so farfetched? Three years is a long time, but not forever. Even Caterina, who’s a virgin, gets more of a pass than Gianna.
Once you get past this, and see just how desperate Gianni wants her family off her back, her quest to find someone will feel better to watch. Even with the unnatural pressure her family puts on her though, the love and warmth in Gianni’s family and among her group of friends shines through. It makes us root for her to actually find that boyfriend before Christmas, even if we know there are going to be ups and downs along the way.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Gianni bikes along a canal, wearing the jacket Nicola valiantly offered her, thinking about her encounter with him.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Massimo Rigo as Gianni’s father Pietro, as he is the only one who isn’t putting any pressure on her to get a boyfriend.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Pietro plugs in his massive nativity display in his shop, it completely knocks out the power in the building. Very slapsticky scene.
Our Call: STREAM IT. I Hate Christmas is a pretty standard romantic holiday story, but with the beauty of Venice in the background and the utterly charming lead performance by Pilar Fogliati, it’s a pleasure to watch.
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.