Is Joe Wright’s M. Son of the Century the Best Series of the Year?

Director Joe Wright signals his intent early on in M. Son of the Century, his eight-part series on the rise of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

“Follow me,” Luca Marinelli, playing Mussolini, whispers conspiratorily to the audience early in the first episode. “Follow me, you’ll love me too. I’ll make you a fascist.”

Over the course of eight hours, the show traces a decade in Mussolini’s career, his transition from journalist and political outsider to the head of a populist movement and new political ideology —fascism— that would force itself into the mainstream and seize power. Adapted from the first volume of Antonio Scurati’s bestselling “documentary novel” of the same name, M. Son of the Century shows how Mussolini, a former editor of the Italian Socialist Party’s official newspaper, fell out with the left and used any means necessary, up to and including murder, to advance his political career.

But Wright’s series is no dry history lesson. Instead of spending time explaining fascism, he tosses viewers directly into the chaos, violence and frenzied excitement of the movement that gave rise to the man his followers called Il Duce (the leader). Marinelli’s to-camera monologues — done House of Cards-style — are designed to draw the viewers in and make them complicit with the actions on screen. The goal is to understand the seduction of fascism, why so many people fell for Mussolini’s message then, and why so many are falling for a similar message today.

“Being British, Mussolini has always been this kind of strange, almost clown-like figure,” says Wright. “Growing up, saying ‘you’re a fascist’ was kind of a knee-jerk attack one would use on any figure in authority, be it a school teacher, a parent or the police. This series was an opportunity for me to learn about the very roots of fascism and how they have fed through into what we see happening around us in the world now. The rise of the far-right was a strong reason for wanting to do this particular story right now.”

Wright, known for his award-winning British period dramas Atonement, Pride and Prejudice and The Darkest Hour, takes a radical departure in M. Son of the Century. Inspired by the experimental filmmakers of the 1920s, particularly the Italian Futurist movement, he uses every stylistic trick in the book: Crosscutting newsreel footage with his actors’ performances, using old-school back projection to show activity outside Mussolini’s car window, setting the most brutal violence of Il Duce’s gang of black-shirted thugs to a hypnotic techno beat composed by Tom Rowlands, one half of the British electronic music duo the Chemical Brothers.

“The use of the Chemical Brothers’ music felt completely anachronistic. However, it felt like it had the right energy for the futurists. A lot of the grandfathers of house music and techno were inspired by the futurists. Combining the modernity of the Chemical Brothers with Howard Hawks’ gangster aesthetic in Scarface (1932) and the futurism of [Soviet experimental filmmaker] Dziga Vertov in Man with a Movie Camera (1929) felt like an exciting way to tell our story.”

Stefano Bises, a writer on the acclaimed Italian mafia series Gomorrah, who co-wrote the series with Wright and Davide Serino, calls M. Son of the Century “the portrait of a giant, intelligent, seductive coward, someone whose motivation you understand, maybe even someone you empathize with for a moment, but then feel bad and miserable for having empathized.”

Antonio Scurati’s novel was criticized by some for humanizing Mussolini, an attack that could also be leveled at Wright’s series. Marinelli is almost unrecognizable as Il Duce, with a bald pate and extra pounds of doughy flesh — the result of “lots of cake and pasta” — but the Italian star retains his electric charism.

“I actually think there’s more of a danger if we demonize characters like Mussolini to the point of dehumanizing them,” says Wright. “I remember a moment when [U.S. President George W.] Bush was talking about the atrocities at Abu Gharib, and he said the soldiers that committed them ‘have sickness in their souls.’ He said they’re not people, they’re monsters — and therefore absolved himself and all of us of responsibility. And I think the important thing is for all of us to take responsibility for these characters, to take responsibility for having allowed them to reach these exalted positions of power.”

Many will see a direct parallel between Wright’s Mussolini — an overweight media-savvy blowhard who manages to enthrall a nation — and a certain president-to-be. There’s even a line that gives the game away. When Marinelli leers at the camera and intones: “Let’s make Italy. Great. Again!”

“At a certain point, the script had a lot more allusions to contemporary politics and politicians, but we decided to take them all out,” says Wright. “We believe that the audience is intelligent enough to draw their own parallels. Just the [one line] was too good to lose. We succumbed to temptation with that one.”

M. Son of the Century was produced by Fremantle subsidiary The Apartment in collaboration with Fremantle, Comcast-owned Sky, Cinecittà, Pathé, and Small Forward Productions. The series will premiere on Sky in Europe in the spring of 2025. A U.S. launch date has not yet been set.