Four new episodes, airing on Sundays starting tomorrow, on MHz Networks.
Yay!
Oh, the new Livia doesn’t even pretend to speak Italian, she’s just badly dubbed. This has ever been the only character I don’t like. Fortunately, she’s not around much.
Roddy
They better not recast Ingrid. That actress is wonderful. I have spoken.
Isabell Sollman. Perfectly cast, IMO.
The new Montalbanos are the only Italian programs on the September “International Mystery” schedule, and the only returning series.
Monday through Saturday: Six totally new series!
There are three Scandinavian (all with male detectives; one a high-end literary adaption partially set in '60s flashbacks, one with lots of visiting FBI agents, one featuring a former Wallander (Rolf Lassgård), and three French (two with female detectives; one with romance, supernatural elements, AND '60s flashbacks – said to be France’s biggest popular televison hit ever; Wikipedia has four family trees to keep all the characters straight).
The Scandinavian literary one apparently has its mystery elements left unresolved, because solutions dictated by the author would ruin his angst-y, post-modernist street cred. The popularity of the French romance/woo-woo one also damages your angst-y, post-modernist street cred, but the French seem able get beyond that problem if the international sales bring in enough money.
The schedule:
Sunday … Montalbano (four episodes)
Monday … The Half-Brother (eight episodes)
Tuesday … Antigone 34 (six episodes)
Wednesday … Sebastian Bergman (two episodes)
Thursday … Dolmen (six episodes)
Friday … Blood on the Docks (four episodes)
Saturday … Arne Dahl (five episodes)
I agree, although what is it with Sicilians and leggy blondes from northern Europe?
No idea whether Ingrid appears in any of these episodes, so far she has only been a semi-regular.
This series is very under-covered in IMDB, so I can’t check the cast list there, and MHZ Networks doesn’t provide anything at all. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Roddy
If one could read Italian, or if Google Translate were better, Google.it (Google Italy) would be the place to go. For example:
http://www.montalbano.rai.it/dl/portali/site/page/Page-cbbaf188-90bf-4fa1-be7a-1fe00df83c42.html*
So, a pretty good episode, I guess, but they are turning Catarella into even more of a cartoon than he was before. I thought they had been developing his character a bit, but he is still slamming the door open, claiming that “it slipped,” mispronouncing every name, getting over-excited about everything, and so on. It’s getting a little old.
No Ingrid in this episode.
And what about Fazio? I remember years ago he was studying for his doctorate so he could become a commissario, but nothing seemed to come of it. I like having him around, but he’s getting kind of old to be the little junior go-fer detective.
Roddy
It’s been fifteen years for all the characters, plus another five or ten further back to Young Montalbano. So Salvo and Livia, for example, have been having the same spats for a quarter of a century or so.
Augello and Beba get married and have a kid, but that’s really about it for changes in the characters’ lives.
In the “behind the scenes” programs, Luca Zingaretti talks about using commedia dell’arte technique in making the shows – improvisation by established traditional characters on stock situations. For me, that added a dimension to a lot of what we are seeing.
(And yes, it’s been fifteen real years – Francois is now twenty.)
MHz’s notes on this week’s International Mystery line-up:
http://mhz.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=6301.0&dlv_id=18321
Maybe I should start a new thread for the other MHz international mysteries, but since FeAudrey was nice enough to post the entire list of new shows, I think I will go ahead and post here.
Saw the first two episodes (45 minutes each, and I wish they wouldn’t fill between them with fluff, just start the next episode at :45 and finish at :30 of the next hour) of The Half Brother.
I liked it, although the plot points don’t seem especially obscure at this point. Also, 8 episodes but only 4 weeks because it’s two short episodes every week.
Tomorrow is Antigone34. I’m going to try to watch it. Please check in with your impressions.
Roddy
You started one last March, which drew many of the same posters as this one:
On that thread, TreacherousCretin mentioned an earlier Montalbano-oriented one (OP Lust4Life):
Maybe we should ask the mods to merge them with this one, possibly as something like “MHz International Mysteries, Especially Montalbano”.
(blushes; murmurs thanks)
MHz’s notes on this week’s International Mystery line-up:
http://mhz.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=6321.0&dlv_id=18401
(it’s “kill/seriously injure a major character” week)
A few notes from me about the new shows:
Sunday … Montalbano
Episodes One and Two had the same story frame, featuring a beautiful woman pursuing Salvo to advance a criminal purpose. The first was OK; the second, very talky and a very disjointed sequence of events.
Monday … The Half-Brother
The warned-of literary one – I didn’t watch. Posts on MHz’s Facebook page indicate great period authentic look, mixed feelings about drama vs detection among the “mystery” crowd.
Tuesday … Antigone 34
Didn’t expect to like this one, but did. Originality in plotting and gorgeous photography of new-to-us setting (the South of France).
Wednesday … Sebastian Bergman
Only two episodes, repeated immediately, so I passed it up this time around to avoid overdosing on all this new material.
Thursday … Dolmen
The sighs I’d been expecting sigh over the scenery, romance, mystery, and supernatural stuff were applied only to the scenery.
Again from Facebook, I seem not to be the only disappointed viewer. Those of us in the mood for some woo and some woo-woo stuff are not signing up for nine hours of this without field reports indicating that it gets better in later episodes.
Friday … Blood on the Docks
Another winner from France (making them two-for-three), but so bleak that it makes Spiral look like Don Matteo. Detective’s good-looking, deaf, signing, adult son is a sweetie.
Saturday … Arne Dahl
Same production team as Beck, and they are doing themselves proud. Including the special effects guys; not for the squeamish. Generous is both quantity and quality of victims.
MHz typically repeats new shows immediately after their first run, presumably for the benefit of those who started watching after the first episode and want to catch up. So don’t by shy about starting a series a few episodes in.