Wednesday 27 November 2013

Commissario Montalbano (2013)

Is this latest series of Uncle Monty (as I have started calling it for no good reason) getting predictable, I had been thinking? Always two seemingly unconnected stories that are always connected, always the damsel in distress who isn't what she seems, the pantomime behaviour of Catarella, unfinished meals etc. Then the third episode kicks in, with its rather more serious tale of Mafia 'suicide' and political intervention. Montalbano despairs of his country in which a senior politician has said "We must learn to live with the mafia" (whether this is true I couldn't corroborate) to the extent that it has put him off his lunch: both the prandial and political aspects of this are series firsts, as the show has always slightly skirted around direct mafia criticism or focus.

The drama still benefits enormously from Franco Piersanti's marvellously evocative and moody score - some of it I think new for this season - which is unlike anything else on television ever.

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