Italian comedy duo Salvo Ficarra and Valentino Picone have been pilgrims at the first Christmas and children switched at birth, but they’ve never been in this much trouble. In their new Netflix series Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery, the pair are entangled in a murder mystery that draws in everyone from their childhood sweethearts to a legendary crime boss. In all that hullabaloo, it can be difficult to keep track. Our dedicated family tree can help (It also has delicious Sicily-grown olives). 

Salvo Ficarra as Salvo

Ficarra and Picone have been a comedy duo since the early 1990s, with their work together ranging from live performances to acting to even writing and directing. (They were nominated for Italy’s equivalent of the Academy Awards for directing 2007’s Il 7 e l’8). In Framed!, Salvo (who shares the actor’s name, if not his sense of humor) is a harried television repairman who stumbles upon a corpse and winds up framed for murder. He also nurses an addiction to TV crime dramas, which lends the show a metatextual layer; Salvo keeps a running commentary on what the characters on his favorite show The Touch of the Killer would do. Salvo is (unhappily) married to Ester, which makes him Valentino’s brother-in-law and Mrs. Antonietta’s son-in-law. 

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Valentino Picone as Valentino

Salvo’s brother-in-law Valentino is played by Ficarra’s comic partner Valentino Picone. The pair are as close on the show as they appear to be in real life: They work together, laugh together, and, well, get framed for murder together. Valentino is long-suffering, lactose-intolerant and madly in love with his old classmate Agata, who also happens to be the new deputy constable. Like his real-life collaborator Ficarra, Valentino is a creator as well as a performer; the pair directed every episode of Framed!

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Anna Favella as Ester

Ester (Anna Favella) is Valentino’s sister and Salvo’s wife and quickly becomes a crucial part of the plot to frame the pair. When Salvo and Valentino are called to fix a television in the home of a murdered mafia stooge, they discover that Ester has been carrying on an affair with the dead man — the perfect motive for Salvo to commit murder. Favella is best-known for her work on the Italian television series Terra ribelle.

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Marianna di Martino as Agata 

Agata is Valentino’s childhood sweetheart and the current deputy constable, which means she is in the unique position of casually dating Valentino when she isn’t trying to arrest him. Eventually, when the pair bumble their way into being caught by the police, the two work alongside her to bring down a notorious crime boss named the Most Holy Father. Di Martino played the lead role in Leonardo Pieraccioni’s Un Fantastico Via Vai and popped up as a desk clerk in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Mary Cipolla as Mrs. Antonietta

Valentino and Ester’s mother Mrs. Antonietta is a less prominent presence on the show, but Mary Cipolla makes the most of her screen time. Cipolla previously collaborated with Ficarra and Picone on their 2009 film La matassa, and here she gets to torment both of them in turn. Mrs. Antonietta’s ricotta cake is a constant source of stress for poor, lactose intolerant Valentino, and she keeps a suspicious eye on her son-in-law Salvo once she realizes how unhappy her daughter is. 

Season 1 Trailer | Framed! A Sicilian Murder Mystery