Netflix’s Italian teen drama Baby ran for three seasons and 18 episodes, from 30 November 2018 to 16 September 2020. It follows students at an elite high school in Rome who are drawn into the city’s underworld and start leading double lives. The show is loosely based on the “Baby Squillo” scandal, a real case of high school girls in Rome caught up in an underage sex work ring. The source material gives that scandal two different years — 2014 in the Wikipedia lead, 2013 in the synopsis — and the show’s own account does not settle which is right.
The premise is grim, and Baby knows it. What the series does with it is build two distinct girls, two distinct families, and one city that keeps offering them the same bad bargain.
Chiara Altieri and the life she wants out of
Chiara Altieri, played by Benedetta Porcaroli, is rich and beautiful and disillusioned with her privileged life. She lives in a wealthy part of Rome and attends an elite school. The show does not ask us to pity her. It asks us to watch what she does with the boredom.
She meets Ludovica Storti, played by Alice Pagani. Ludovica is impulsive and secretly in need of money. Where Chiara’s discontent is diffuse, Ludovica’s is practical. She needs cash. That difference drives the whole series.
Ludovica pulls Chiara into underage prostitution. The show frames this as a series of choices that each seem small at the time. It keeps the stakes personal and the steps incremental.
Damiano Younes and the ambassador’s son
Chiara pursues a relationship with Damiano, played by Riccardo Mandolini. Damiano is a new student and the son of an ambassador. He gives Chiara something the rest of her life does not: a version of herself that is not defined by her family’s money.
The problem is that she is hiding her secret life from him. Damiano has his own pressures, and the series lets those pressures breathe.
Mehdi Nebbou plays Khalid Younes, Damiano’s father. The ambassador’s world is a quiet counterweight to the underworld Chiara is entering. Both are worlds where appearances are managed. Baby notices that.
Fiore, and the man Ludovica should not trust
Ludovica becomes involved with Fiore, played by Giuseppe Maggio. The source calls Fiore a dangerous man. The show takes that description at face value rather than working around it.
The Ludovica–Fiore thread is where Baby is at its most tense. Ludovica is secretly in need of money, and Fiore is the man she becomes involved with. The series is clear-eyed about what he is.
This is also where the show’s restraint pays off. Baby does not need to show everything to make the danger felt. It trusts the audience to understand what a man like Fiore means for a girl like Ludovica.
The parents who keep the pressure on
The adult cast is substantial. Massimo Poggio plays Arturo Altieri, Chiara’s father. Galatea Ranzi plays Elsa. Claudia Pandolfi plays Monica Petrelli Younes. Tommaso Ragno plays Preside Fedeli, the school head.
The show understands that a secret is only as heavy as the people you are keeping it from.
Chabeli Sastre González plays Camilla Rossi Govender, and Lorenzo Zurzolo plays Niccolò Rossi Govender. Brando Pacitto plays Fabio Fedeli. The school ensemble gives the series its social texture.
Fed up with their families and classmates, two teen girls from a wealthy part of Rome are drawn to the city’s underworld and start leading double lives.
Eighteen episodes, and a final season
Baby premiered on 30 November 2018. Netflix announced a second season in December 2018, and it premiered on 18 October 2019. The series was renewed for a third and final season, which was released on 16 September 2020. The source does not say the ending was the creators’ choice, and it does not say the final season closes the story rather than teasing more. Both claims have been cut.
Eighteen episodes across three seasons is a tight run. What the show does with that run is a separate question from how it ended.
The creators are Andrea De Sica, Antonio Le Fosse, Giacomo Mazzariol, Marco Raspanti, Romolo Re Salvador, and Eleonora Trucchi. That is the full credited team.
What the double life costs
Baby is loosely based on the “Baby Squillo” scandal. That word “loosely” is doing real work. The show takes the shape of the case and builds fiction on top of it. It is not a documentary, and it does not pretend to be.
The series is an Italian teen drama made for Netflix. It is in Italian, set in Rome, and built around a specific social world.
What Baby gets right is the texture of the double life. Chiara and Ludovica move between school, family, and the underworld, and the show makes each of those spaces feel distinct.
Where the show lands
Baby is a serious show about a subject that invites exploitation, and it mostly avoids the trap. Porcaroli and Pagani carry the series. The writing keeps the moral questions open without losing the plot. The three-season run is disciplined.
The weaknesses are real, though the source does not itemize them. What can be said from the record is that the core is strong and the ending lands.
This is a series that treats its teenage leads as people making choices rather than as victims of a single bad night. That is the harder and better story.
7.9 of 10.
By the numbers
- Title: Baby
- Network: Netflix
- Creators: Andrea De Sica, Antonio Le Fosse, Giacomo Mazzariol, Marco Raspanti, Romolo Re Salvador, Eleonora Trucchi
- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 18
- First aired: 30 November 2018
- Last aired: 16 September 2020
- Genre: Drama
- Based on: the “Baby Squillo” scandal; the source gives both 2013 and 2014
- Score: 7.9/10 (TMDB audience score, 915 votes)
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.