The parallels between Mussolini and Trump are obvious in this furious Italian drama

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The contemporary implications are obvious, and alongside Wright the show’s writers, including Gomorrah co-creator Stefano Bises, never overdo the parallels between the 1920s and 2020s. Mussolini is a Trump-like archetype, whether railing against “parasites”, making martial promises, or following the money. Mussolini’s fascist movement is initially pro-worker, railing against the ruling order, but when the Socialists set off strikes and land seizures, the wealthy pay off Mussolini to have his thugs restore the status quo with violence.

As Mussolini manipulates the levers of control, Wright is audacious with the means of image-making. The director’s films have always been visually involved, whether it’s the one-shot Dunkirk experience in Atonement or the propulsive action sequences in Hanna, but Mussolini: Son of the Century gives him a broader, almost fantastical canvas. Wright and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey roam the sets, and he uses archival footage as a kind of rear projection for the national psyche. It can be overwhelming, even hinting at a rapturous trance state, but that also suggests how Italians succumbed to Mussolini.

Wright and Marinelli, whose collaboration here feels titanic for how in tune they are, do not take a backwards step. It’s how they make the past apply to the present. Always bracing, the show acknowledges Mussolini’s eventual fate, stripped of power, executed, and strung up in public during the final months of World War II, but his aims live on. “We’re still here,” Mussolini promises.

Mussolini: Son of the Century is now streaming on SBS on Demand.