In 1883 Turin, Italy, Lidia Poët has become the first modern Italian female lawyer. Her groundbreaking success is shortlived however, as after taking her very first case the Court of Appeals rules that Lidia's registration as a lawyer was illegal, barring her from practice. Lidia is not to be deterred though. As she's preparing her appeal to the Italian Supreme Court, she works for her brother (a lawyer himself), taking up seemingly hopeless cases with vigor as she defies many social mores.
Released February 15, 2023, the series is a Netflix Original.
Tropes:
- Action Girl: Not most of the time, but in 1x6 Lidia knocks out a drunk man who's cornered her, jumps on a train in motion and holds people at gunpoint without hesitation.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Lidia often annoys Enrico, her older brother, given her rebellious ways as she often fights social norms. He comes to understand and appreciate her more over time however.
- Arranged Marriage: Lidia resisted one when she was younger, wanting only to marry a man who she'd chosen, though her mother rebuked her for her defiance. It's revealed her father had done this not for her benefit but a need for money as he was in debt. Enrico, her older brother, didn't know and is very upset to learn what he'd done. Her niece Marianna is having her marriage arranged too, but secretly wants another young man, and Lidia encourages her to pursue him.
- Artistic License – History: The Volumetric Glove is shown being used in 1883 Italy. It was not invented until 1895 in reality.
- Bluffing the Murderer: In 1x1 Lidia tells a man whom she suspects actually murdered Adele that fingerprints which will show who her murderer was will be lifted from the crime scene, and then lays a trap for him when he arrives to remove them, proving that he's guilty.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Jacopo turns out to have adopted anarchism, joining a group and then left after its leader advocated violent revolution. After another member turned over information on them to the police, two others killed her in revenge.
- Born in the Wrong Century: Lidia is a bold, outspoken, liberated young woman who has sex out of wedlock and wants a career in a profession considered unacceptable for women in the 1880s. She is essentially a 21st century modern woman stuck in the 19th century when such changes were still just beginning to occur.
- Clear Their Name: Every episode involves Lidia investigating murders her client (or later, her brother's actually) has been accused of to clear them. Only one case has them turn out to be really guilty.
- Cool Aunt: Lidia encourages her niece Marianna to be more independent like her and aids her to follow her wishes, even when it goes against what Marianna's parents want.
- Damsel out of Distress: Lidia deftly knees a drunken man in the groin then slams his head into a wall to knock him out after he corners her.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Lidia faces constant incredulity or hostility over being Italy's first female lawyer, and then gets disbarred as the courts decide her enrollment was illegal, because it's unsuitable for women to participate in legal discussions and their role is at home, which devastates her, but even her own family agrees with this. Also, her suggestion that fingerprinting can be used for evidence also gets dismissed at first, as this was a very new idea at the time. In 1x4, the issue of women in society gets highlighted again with one of the few female professors tried for murder, while she's hated widely not just for the charge but daring to go beyond what most people viewed as women's place at the time.
- Disappeared Dad: Lidia's father is dead by the time the series starts, and he appears only in flashbacks.
- Disposable Sex Worker: 1x4 reveals that several Italian chemists conducted experiments with a new drug on young women, largely prostitutes with no families so their deaths wouldn't draw attention.
- Establishing Character Moment: Lidia is introduced while having sex in her bed with a young man, against the rules of her landlady, whom she owes rent, and is a female attorney in 1800s Italy. This shows her as a progressive, freespirited rule-breaker from the start.
- Fan Disservice: Several murder victims were good-looking young women, but they're shown after having autopsies with the dissection scars on their chests in a decidedly unappealing way.
- Forbidden Love:
- Marianna turns out to have a romance with a man when she's also engaged already, making it a taboo.
- In 1x2 it turns out that one woman who's accused of murdering another was her lover, which is a nearly unthinkable scandalous concept since this is Italy of the 1880s, and thus they keep it secret.
- Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty: Lidia always proves a client innocent by showing that someone else committed the murder they're accused of, who then gets arrested for it while they are released (aside from the one case where she defends a guilty person, who confesses).
- Headbutt of Love: Lidia and Enrico do this after bonding in 1x3 after he learns how their father had tried to essentially sell her in an Arranged Marriage that would cancel his debts. Enrico was horrified to learn this and gave Lidia more support than he'd ever expressed before.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: Lidia is not shy about cursing, including right to people's faces, as one more aspect of her rebellious and less ladylike personality.
- Love Triangle: Lidia is involved with Andrea, but then she and Jacopa develop a mutual attraction too. She still hasn't chosen between them by the end of Season 1.
- Mad Scientist: In 1x4 it's revealed several Italian chemists secretly dosed poor young women with an experimental drug to stop scarlet fever, with many dying, specifically selecting them for their lack of family and low social origin so most people would not notice or care.
- Male Frontal Nudity: In 1x1 Jacopo gets up from the bath after Lidia confronts him, but his nudity is blurry as she looks away.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Lidia and Enrico encounter a supposed medium in 1x5 who seems to have genuine insight at first. However, soon Lidia offers mundane explanations for this, and though she denies fakery it's still left unclear if she's genuine or not.
- Missing Mom: The killing of the murderer's mother in 1x4 turns out to be the motive, to kill her murderer for revenge, as she was all the killer had.
- Ms. Fanservice: Lidia is a beautiful young woman who's shown topless having sex with men multiple times in the series.
- Patricide: In 1x3 a young man confesses he'd murdered his father. However, it turns out that he'd been framed by his brother, who was really the murderer.
- Period Piece: The series is set in 1883 Italy, specifically Turin.
- Plucky Girl: Lidia is never more than briefly deterred from her goals in spite of the institutionalized sexism she faces as it's Italy during the 1880s, her strong determination always taking her on even if she has to lie or manipulate for what she wants.
- Predatory Prostitute: The accused in 1x5 is a prostitute who admits she had drugged and robbed her clients all the time, but denies murdering one.
- Revenge: This tuns out to be the killer's motive in 1x4, avenging one murder through committing another (of the murderer).
- R-Rated Opening: The series opens with the body of a ballerina soon being found who's been murdered, and then swiftly cuts to protagonist Lidia having sex while she's shown topless.
- Secret Relationship:
- Lidia is secretly having sex with Andrea, as they aren't married (this would have been a scandal in the 1880s for her and her family).
- Lidia's niece Marianna is secretly seeing a young man, but is already engaged. She not only encourages Marianna to pursue it but counsels her how on discretion so they won't be caught as well.
- In 1x2 the accused it's revealed was seeing another woman secretly (due to homophobia).
- Slipping a Mickey: The accused in 1x5 is a prostitute who gave her clients drugged alcohol, even calling it a mickey, and then robbed them as they lay unconscious.
- Stalker with a Crush: In 1x1 Pietro Baiocchi is accused of murder partly as a result of him stalking the victim Adele Valery for months before the murder, but he insists that she reciprocated his feelings and had called off her engagement to another man. He's right, and she actually was murdered for doing this by her fiance's father.
- Sympathetic Murderer: The killer in 1x4 murdered to avenge the death of her mother, killed due to an unethical experiment along with many other women who had been deemed disposable.
- Truth Serum: In 1x2 a woman who's accused of murder gets subjected to the Volumetric Glove, an early lie detector device to measure blood pressure. However only the responses that indicate she's lying are noted, not truthful ones, due to bias.
- Two-Person Pool Party: Implied though not shown in Episode 1 when Lidia comes in upon Jacopa sharing a bath with a nude woman, though any sex apparently happened before she came.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Lidia Poët was a real woman, but except for the most basic details such as her being the first female Italian lawyer, being expelled from her profession due to sexism and then working with her brother, the stories that the series deals with are fictional.
- Wall Bang Her: Lidia is eaten out by Jacopo while sitting up on her desk in 1x4 before they move to her bed.
