Can we talk about MHz International Mysteries?

Cafe Society
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This is available in San Francisco on Comcast cable 198, usually every evening at 6:00 pm and repeated at 9:00 pm, for 90 minutes or so per episode. Sometimes there’s an hour show at 6:00 and the 90-minute show starts at 7:00. Everything is in the original language with subtitles, and here at least it’s commercial free (associated with a local PBS station).

Here are some of the shows I’ve watched:

Don Matteo (60 minutes) - Terence Stamp as an Italian priest who investigates crimes, usually not very serious ones. Cartoony fluff, but it can be fun to watch, and it got better after the first season.

Montalbano - A Sicilian police superintendent, his absentee blonde girlfriend, and his madcap colleagues. This was my first addiction, then it ran out of episodes. Now they’re showing episodes again, and it’s not as good the 2nd time. But I like the Montalbano character mostly (except for the over-the-top Sicilian emotionality), and I especially like his Inspector Fazio. Guy does all the work and gets none of the credit.

Young Montalbano - don’t waste your time; a shameless attempt to cash in on the popularity of Montalbano with a younger cast. Somehow, everything is 20 years earlier but still in the present day.

Commisario Brunetti mysteries - Set in Venice, but done all in German by a German cast and crew. Reportedly this is because the author, Donna Leon, insisted on a foreign production company because she was afraid of the Mafia getting involved. Anyway, aside from the annoying teenage children, I like this one a lot. Brunetti is unique for the normality in his life (not depressive, not divorced, not widowed, still in love with his wife, etc.). It’s fun to watch the actor who plays the clueless boss Patta.

Fog and Crimes - Another Italian police superintendent with a blonde girlfriend. This one is much quieter and more thoughtful, and I mostly liked it (except for the girlfriend). But the story arc ran out when he found out about his dead wife’s past, and it just seemed to stop.

Beck - Swedish police superintendent, divorced, with a snotty adult daughter. I liked this series; his chief assistant detective Gunvald is fascinating - a thug but a great intuitive detective. I watch this whenever it’s on.

Wallander - another Swedish policeman, divorced, and with a daughter. There have been two different casts for this, one with a fat blond guy, and one with a slimmer brown haired guy, who was I think supposed to be after taking better care of his health. Fairly routine otherwise. In the second version (slimmed down) his daughter joins the force and his detective team (!) and seems to be a much better detective than he is.

Maigret - this is my current favorite. Supposed to be late 40s early 50s in France. Very atmospheric, and I think perfectly captures the essence of Maigret’s character and “method” (which he claims not to have, but his method is just listening and not jumping to conclusions).

Blood of the Vine - modern day, southern France, the (non-police) detective is a professional wine expert. Lots of crime in wine country, I guess. Pretty good so far.

There are several other Italian policemen: one starting just at the end of WWII and transitioning into post-war; one that’s a buffoonish Dirty Harry character, and so on. I don’t watch these.

So is this channel available elsewhere in the country? Anyone watch it and any of these programs? What do you think?
Roddy

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Loved Maigret, liked it better than the Masterpiece Mystery version, but my daughter doesn’t do subtitles.

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I didn’t know there was a Masterpiece Mystery version of Maigret, but when I looked it up I saw that it was the one with Michael Gambon. I’ve never seen it, but I would have thought he would make a good Maigret.

But no-one can, in my estimation, top Bruno Cremer.
Roddy

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There already was a very short thread about Montalbano last Fall, in Cafe Society.

My wife and I love Montalbano, recently acquired the 20+ episode DVD set.
We’re also fanatic about Van Veeteren, wish there were more episodes.
Very slightly less enthusiastic about Wallander, prefer the oldest of the three series but enjoy them all.
Really enjoyed Anno 1790, disappointed to learn they stopped production after the first season.

Edit: Here in NW Idaho we get MHZ on PBS, via DirecTv.

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I have been watching for a few years, and am a big fan. If this thread seems to show interest, I’ll add my opinions of various series.

For the Italian series, the magic formula is liberal politics, conservative morals, gorgeous scenery, and comical policemen – the shows are all built off this same basic platform. Each is set in a different area of Italy, presumably the effort of RAI (the national producer/broadcaster) to include everyone.

For those who’d like to take a look, the mHz affiliate list:

http://www.mhznetworks.org/mhz-worldview/affiliates

(also internet streaming)
Their series’ pages (currently running, plus a few previously-run or in the pipeline):

http://mhznetworks.org/programs/mystery-drama

(The Thursday night slot used to be held down by movies from small countries; that may be restored to the schedule.)
Episode guides, mostly based on DVDs of the shows:

http://italian-mysteries.com/DVD-Crime-Series.html
The mHz Facebook page has viewer comments:

https://www.facebook.com/MHzWorldviewInternationalMystery?sk=wall
mHz’s daytime schedule is newscasts from all over (list not complete):

(al Jazeera is mainstream by these guys; bound to be a continent you like among the offerings)
A few quick notes:

“Don Matteo” is played not by Terrence Stamp (English art house actor), but Terrence Hill (Italian spaghetti western star). Cowboy references in the scripts are ragging on that.

“Fog and Crimes” (which I loved) has fourteen episodes over three seasons; the dead wife’s backstory is in episode two. mHz has been dropping the occasional episode into empty time slots. The OP might like the series better if he saw the whole thing, in sequence.

“Montalbano” is based on a series of novels by Andrea Camillieri, widely available in English. “Young Montalbano” is based on some short stories giving the characters’ backstories; those have not been published in English.

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I realized I had probably typed the wrong Terrence last night after I was in bed. D’oh!

I saw several episodes of Fog and Crimes when it was showing, they seemed to be in sequence; then they moved him to a different city (further north, with snow) and that was the last one they showed.

I had high hopes for “Young Montalbano” but it made no sense to me as a backstory. How much younger was he supposed to be? Aside from the physical dissimilarity (Young Montalbano is skinny, original Montalbano is barrel chested), he looked 20 years younger, but he had the same girlfriend, and it wasn’t set 20 years in the past.

Anyway, I think the main thing I wanted to convey was how interesting it is to me to see these artifacts of other cultures, even if they are pop culture in most cases, any evening on my TV. It makes a nice break from American tv.
Roddy

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Not to mention his hair. That head of hair is not going to be naturally bald (or nearly so) within 15-20 years. We had low expectations for YM, but think it works well enough as a stand-alone series rather than a prequel.

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Excellent - the was on the San Matteo University college station (it also streams) but it moved and we lost it. We started watching for Brunetti and then saw Montalbo and then it vanished.
Having read all the Brunetti books, there are a bunch of differences. The kids are pretty accurate, but his mother in the books was in a nursing home with Alzheimers, and his father-in-law is a count, one of the richest men in Venice. The stories pretty much followed the books, though.
It was amusing watching Germans play Italians versus Italians playing Italians. I know, Venice versus Sicily is very different, but still.

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With regard to Montalbano’s hair: you are not the only ones to note that.

In the latest Montalbano book (The Dance of the Seagull) Montalbano himself complains about the baldness of the actor playing him, as opposed to his own full head of hair. He even mentions the actor by name. I think that this is the first reference in the books to the films.

The context is a quarrel with his (visiting) girlfriend, Livia, who has arranged an excursion to another part of Sicily. It is the area where the series is filmed (different from where it is set), and Montalbano says he doesn’t want to run into the film crew.

That last may be a bit of snark at Donna Leon, who claims in interviews that she hasn’t allowed publication of her books in Italy (she’s American, writes and is published in English) because being a celebrity where she lives would be so stressful and tiresome.

Anyway, inside jokes and cultural references are common in both the books (many of the detectives have literary roots) and the various series. If you have a Prime Minister like Berlusconi, you don’t want to let it go to waste …
“Montalbano” is on tonight (Friday); it’s the second episode filmed (the order varies a bit from the publication dates).

Tomorrow: Brunetti’s Venice! (the main attraction for me – I’m not a big fan of Donna Leon’s books)

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I liked “Scene of the Crime” which was done in german. The main actor was good-looking and I could follow the story without knowing any german. I haven’t seen any episodes lately, so maybe the series is over. I’ll have to check out these other series.

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This is funny; someone said these books are available in English? Is this newer one also available?

I am so tired of Livia, every time she shows up it just drags the show down for me. I can guess the answer, but I often wonder why so many of the Italian policemen have blonde girlfriends played by foreign actresses (ok, only two that I can think of, Soneri and Montalbano). And Livia apparently doesn’t speak Italian all that well, because her lines are dubbed. Soneri refers in an early episode to his girlfriend’s accent (she’s Russian, I think played by a Russian actress).

Anyway, I can see why Montalbano doesn’t want to make a commitment like marriage to Livia, she’s really annoying.
Roddy

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You sound just like my wife. I’m neutral toward Livia, usually can see her point of view. Sort of. But we both keep hoping that in a future episode Monty will drop the platonic posturing and get serious with Inge, who clearly covets his ass.

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Tonight, Thursday, March 14th, MHz is starting a re-run of the four-episode Detective DeLuca, who “… investigates crimes from the height of Italy’s Fascist regime to the end of the tumultuous postwar period. Based on the historical mystery novels by Carlo Lucarelli …”.

This episode is based on one of Lucarelli’s non-DeLuca books, retrofitted as a DeLuca story to serve as a pre-quel to the three that form the original trilogy:

  • A call girl is found dead on the beach, discovered by schoolchildren and right in front of the house where il Duce is vacationing. When the case gets solved too easily, Detective DeLuca smells a sham and continues with his own investigation. His case hits a wall, however, when what he discovers leads to the highest levels of Fascist society. *

They are good as stories; even better if you know a little about the period in which they are set. The production design is a bit austere, not nearly so gorgeous as the similarly-set “Inspector Nardone”.

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From Mhz’s Facebook page:

  • Our engineers inform us that adding an eighth night to the week is impossible, so instead we’ve added new International Mystery blocks on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 3 PM ET beginning February 1st!*

Saturdays will have the complete twenty-six episode run of Montalbano; Sundays will have an assortment of episodes from the last couple of seasons of Don Matteo shown on MHz (the earlier half of the complete run; both shows are long-running monster hits in Italy and still in production).
The current evening line-up is:

Sunday…Nicolas Le Floch (Louis XV’s France)
Monday…Don Matteo (Italian hill town)
Tuesday…Falcone/Borsellino (see note)
Wednesday…East-West 101 (Australia; Muslim detective)
Thursday…Braquo (France) (replaced by Unni Lindell, Norway, on Jan 16th)
Friday…The Inspector and the Sea (German-made; set in Gotland, Sweden)
Saturday…Arne Dahl (Sweden)

Note: three programs based on real-life contemporary anti-Mafia campaigns in Sicily; Luca “Montalbano” Zingaretti, plays Borsellino in the third program

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Yes! On January 1 Dish changed some channels around, and while searching for a local channel we stumbled back across these. We watched Brunetti and Montalbano the last go round. We have been DVRing all of them, but have been watching the Montalbanos - and the cool half hour features that come with them.
The contrast between the German Italians in Brunetti and the Italian Italians in Montalbano is hilarious. The feature explained that they hire Sicilians for all but the lead parts.

I hope there will be more Brunettis some day, though I much prefer the books. His mother is very chipper for someone in a nursing home with dementia, and no sign of the Count and Countess. I also don’t see Brunetti with stubble.

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Bumped this thread to see if anyone else is watching the series “A French Village”? MHz airs it in International Mysteries though it’s not really a mystery.

It’s a French show from a few years back set in a French town* during the German occupation of WWII. It’s a slice of life, how the townspeople deal with the Occupation along with daily living.

Yes, it’s more than a little soap-opera-ish. Nearly every married couple has both spouses cheating with other characters, for instance. :slight_smile: But it has a lot of action and suspense mixed with the tedium of people trying to live without. (It’s occupation, so “without” seemingly everything but guys with guns ready to arrest or shoot you for making the wrong move. Plenty of those, German and French.) And its written without black-and-white certainty: while many characters do bad things, they also do good things and you can usually see why they did what they did. Which isn’t to say I don’t root for some characters over others. :slight_smile:

*The fictional town seems a bit bigger than a village, despite the title. It has train service, it had two police detectives before the invasion (the police force has swollen under the Occupation), and it doesn’t quite seem like everybody knows everybody on sight. On the other hand, many of the characters seem to run into each other beyond the obvious connections such as the mayor knowing the police chief and school principal.

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Alas, MHz is no longer carried on cable in my market. They do have an online subscription service, but I haven’t tried it.