In a world populated by uplifting “pink fantasy” (so they say), electric girls swoops down Prime Video like an asteroid on earth. You only need to look at the first three episodes, available from March 31, to understand that things are not going to go the way they usually do here. By this expression – “as usual” – we mean a common vulgate of stories written by women, filmed by women and interpreted by women, where women are always damn better than men. Of course, some are offered in the key”normalize womenthat is, with a human physique rather than that of a failed Victoria’s Secret model, some flaws, and possibly a difficult personality. Either way, however, they all end up doing the right thing anyway.

None of that happens here. Who read the novel of the same name Naomi Alderman, who immediately rose to editorial chance, knows this well. The book, published in Italy by Nottetempo, was awarded the Baileys Women’s Award in 2017. But back to Prime Video.

The story is – no spoilers -. We find ourselves in the same world as ours: the same technology, the same geeky teenagers and more or less distracted parents. But at some point, strange phenomena begin to occur: teenagers realize that they have power. More precisely, they emit electricity from their hands. They obviously don’t know how to deal with it, at least not at first. There are those who set fire to microwaves, those who shoot arrows in moments of intimacy. All the facts that we could classify as traffic accidents. The series, which has a choral structure, focuses primarily on four teenagers living in different parts of the world.

The one who promises more surprises is undoubtedly Ellie (Holly Bush) an African-American girl adopted by an American couple. The family idyll is only apparent. Ours, in addition to having the aforementioned power, will also hear a voice in her head telling her that she is the key to everything. The horizontal line featuring Jos also radiates curves (Aulii Cravalho): she lives in Seattle and her mother Margo Cleary-Lopez (Toni Collette) none other than the city’s first citizen. It goes without saying that the institutional obligations of a mother complicate the parenting relationship, and not just a little: Jos feels forgotten and unnoticed. The father, on the other hand, is a doctor and will also be at the forefront of studying the case of the electric girls. After that, there is a place for the mafia, with Roxy (Ria Zmitrovich) British girl associated with mob boss Bernie Monke (Eddie Marsen). And then there is the former budding gymnastics Tatyana Moskaleva (Zrinka Cvitesic), who found her social (and even family…) redemption in her marriage to an old but rich tycoon from Eastern Europe. But the question is, how will this new power be used? For the first three episodes, the question remains open, but it seems that nothing good is expected. This is confirmed by Alderman’s book. Without further spoilers, we can say that girl power will give life to a matriarchal society where young superheroines will take justice into their own hands. No more rape, harassment and discrimination. But there is but. Power will go to their head, and they will make mistakes that people made in the past.

And here we come to the point. The series has a tedious narrative structure – even to create a narrative universe takes two episodes of 50 minutes each – the chorus mechanism creaks – the writers struggle to keep all the storylines together – but the underlying intuition is worth the price of the ticket alone: ​​the story tries to liberate abuses of power from gender Problems. Indeed, the person is no better. But we are not women either. We all make mistakes, because the thirst for revenge, violence, temptations lives in any heart. In modern terms, evil has no gender. Unfortunately.

photo/photo courtesy of Cathy Yu/Prime Video

In addition, we note the always excellent performance Toni Collette: star United States of Tara manages to steal the show from all four teenage main characters. In fact, by the time we get to episode three, we’re becoming more and more interested in what the mayor will do and think, and—again, spoiler-free—ours gives us insane satisfaction at the end of episode three. Not to mention his opening line when he says, “Every revolution starts with a spark.” By the way, if you love Collette, also check out Fragments, the new Netflix series that stars the actress as a resolutely masculine mother.

Moral: worth following electric girls because it adds something new to the debate – on the women’s question – which runs the risk of being redundant.