On the outskirts of Florence, Italy, a monster hunts, murders, and mutilates young couples seemingly without a pattern, stumping police at every turn. Nicknamed Il Mostro by the press, the most ruthless serial killer to have ever terrorized Italy claimed 16 victims between 1968 and 1985. The scripted series, based on a true story, follows an investigation into the still-open case, unraveling a dark family history over the course of four episodes, each told from the perspective of a different suspect.
Created by Leonardo Fasoli (Gamorra, ZeroZeroZero) and Stefano Sollima (ACAB, Romanzo Criminale), The Monster of Florence stars Liliana Bottone (Parthenope), Marco Bullitta (The Mute Man of Sardinia), Francesca Olia (Timor), and Giacomo Fadda (To Rome with Love).
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The series opens with Il Mostro’s seventh and eighth victims, two teens who were killed while in a parked car at a lover’s lane on their way to a party. When district attorney Silvia Della Monica (Bottone) arrives on the crime scene and the police are no closer to gathering clues leading toward unmasking the killer, she makes a bold gamble by telling a lie to the press. SIlvia announces to the world that, before he died, the male victim gave a detailed description of his attacker — in hopes the killer would panic and make a mistake.
At the same time, Silvia and her team reinvestigate other murders tied to Il Mostro. The first was the 1968 murder of Barbara Locci (Olia) and her lover, which her husband, Stefano Mele (Bullitta), was charged with committing. Stefano is serving a 45-year sentence for his crime of passion, but when ballistics from the Il Mostro murders from years later match his Beretta, Silvia and her team suspect Stefano wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. In their efforts to learn the identity of Barbara’s murderer — and to figure out why Stefano would serve prison time to keep that identity secret, especially if it means a serial killer is on the loose — the team unravels a toxic family history full of abuse, lies, and violence. Will Il Mostro continue terrorizing Italy by re-creating his first kill over and over again? Or will district attorney Silvia Monica make sense of a case filled with deception and unreliable narrators?
No, The Monster of Florence is not based on a book.
Yes, The Monster of Florence is based on the true story of Italy’s first modern serial killer, dubbed Il Mostro, who killed 16 people over the course of 17 years. Though there have been many theories about the killer, whose identity is still unknown, the crime drama focuses on one of the least explored avenues of investigation in the case, the “Sardinian trail,” which theorizes that the notorious serial killer may have been tied to the Meles, a family of Sardinian immigrants in Tuscany.
While three men have been charged over the years with murders tied to Il Mostro, the case was reopened by law enforcement in the 2000s. The Italian public still considers the case unsolved, and the victims’ families have petitioned for evidence to be reexamined as recently as 2022.
The Monster of Florence is set all over Italy, with a special focus on Florence’s countryside, Il Mostro’s hunting grounds.
