OK, Watch With Us readers, time for your October Netflix recommendation — a show we love that we know will be your next obsession.
I’ll confess, I have a special connection to our October pick, the romantic dramedy From Scratch — I was lucky enough to work as an assistant in the show’s writers’ room.
While that may make me a smidge biased, as someone who now watches TV for a living, I know quality when I see it — and so do Rotten Tomatoes critics, who have given it an 86 percent fresh rating.
Here’s why you’ll love the limited series.
The Story Involves a European Vacation That Grows into Much More
From Scratch starts, in many ways, like a typical rom-com. It follows Amy (Zoe Saldaña), a recent college grad spending the summer in Florence for a few months of art and beauty before starting law school to please her father, Herschel (Keith David). But when she literally bumps into a handsome and talented chef named Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea) on the street, she’s swept up in a whirlwind romance that turns into the love story of a lifetime. What starts as a story that you might even call cheesy (pecorino romano, anyone?) goes through many evolutions as the story continues past their first meeting.
Without spoiling the story, Amy and Lino’s falling in love is only the beginning. They work together through major family drama, illness, parenting and so much more. From Scratch is neither a comedy nor a drama — it’s truly a love story that explores love in every form it can possibly take.
(But don’t worry, there are plenty of incredible Italian vistas and mouth-watering food close-ups to make you feel like you’ve taken a vacation by the end of the show.)
‘From Scratch’ Is Inspired by a True Story
While the whole “bumping into the love of your life on the street” thing seems way too good to be true, it actually happened to Tembi Locke, whose memoir served as the inspiration for the series. Tembi and her sister, Attica Locke, created the show together, and their relationship is one of many love stories that make the limited series so special.
While Amy and Lino are fictional characters, their stories are heavily (you’d honestly be surprised how heavily) inspired by those of Tembi and her late husband, Rosario “Saro” Gullo. The romance, the grief and the laughter truly come from the heart.
Now is a perfect time to get hooked on From Scratch — both the show and the memoir — because Tembi Locke recently published a follow-up audiobook, Someday, Now, about her life after the events of From Scratch. If you dig into the series this month, you’ll be able to jump directly into the next chapter.
The Show Features One of Zoe Saldaña’s Most Grounded Performances
Saldaña’s acting résumé is extensive, but she’s still probably best known for her out-of-this-world roles in Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy. In From Scratch, we get to see her inhabit a character whose story parallels her own in a myriad of ways. First of all, Saldaña has her own real-life Italian love story — she is married to Italian artist Marco Perego, with whom she shares three children.
Just like Tembi, Saldaña has a close relationship with her sisters, who served as producers on the show — the day they visited our writers’ room was abuzz with warmth and excitement. And perhaps most importantly, the Saldaña sisters experienced the type of intense, shocking grief that the real-life Tembi and the character Amy go through in From Scratch when they lost their father at a young age.
Zoe Saldaña’s connection to the source material is evident in every frame of From Scratch, in the most romantic moments and the most heartbreaking ones, too. It’s one of the best performances of her career — and it will leave you wanting so much more.
