When school is the magical place that helps the weakest – Corriere.it

A ramshackle school in the suburbs, a teaching staff bordering on the eccentric, the daily struggle to improve the study conditions of disadvantaged pupils. Ordinary ingredients that make of Abbott Elementary a sparkling comedy and multiple Golden Globes awards (including, best series in the genre). Authentic phenomenon in the United States, where it aired on the ABC network, in Italy it landed on the Star section of the Disney+ platform. Technically, it’s one workplace comedyor a series set almost entirely in a workplace, in which elements of the so-called are grafted mockumentary, or the “fake documentary”; the narration is in fact punctuated and interspersed by the protagonists who tell their own story point of view, breaking the fourth wall and fueling the pace of the story. But beyond the textbook definitions, “Abbott Elementary” is a little jewel for her magnetic capacity full of pop culture references, and thinking at the same time, a sought-after yet arduous task for many comedies.

In a public school «black» suburbs of Philadelphia, the stories of Janine unfold (Fifth Brunsonwho is also one of the creators of the series) and of the other teachers: the principal Ava, more interested to social media than to the problems of the institute, the veteran Barbara, the sagacious Italian-American Melissa, the gay history teacher Jacob, the cynical janitor Johnson. All perpetually looking for funds to improve structures and teaching and in conflict, then often healed, with each other. From laboratories on new technologies to the creation ofschool gardenfrom new learning methods to the need to reward the best without leaving struggling students behind, “Abbott Elementary” frescoes gracefully the fatigue and purity of the school as a bulwark, a place of recomposition of lacerations of a company. Helping, with the keys of the light complaint and, together, reassurance, to find again humanity and poetry of an often mistreated job. Now the second season is also visible.