I have a bit of a crush on actor Luca Zingaretti. Well, not on him personally, but on the character he is playing in Italian television series Il Commissario Montalbano (Inspector Montalbano). In the series, based on detective novels by Andrea Camilleri, Zingaretti is Salvo Montalbano, a Sicilian police inspector, who solves crimes in a small town called Vigata. The state-owned Italian broadcaster RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) commissioned the series in 1999 together with Swedish television. It has become an international hit and is available on DVD with foreign language subtitles. The BBC is currently showing some episodes.The success has also generated another series called Il giovane Montalbano (Young Montalbano), which is about the start of Salvo's career and his very first cases.
I have only seen season 1 & 2 of Il Commissario Montalbano so far, but I am hooked and there are several reasons why.
Firstly, it is happening in Sicily. The camera carresses the gorgeous landscape in every episode, the sun is shining all the time. The Sicilian tourist office can certainly relax now, we have all put Viagata on our list of all important places to see. In reality, Viagata does not exist. The show was filmed in the region of Ragusa and several other locations. It is heavily edited to give an impression of a perfect Italian holiday location.
Secondly, Salvo Montalbano is a very different type of a police officer compared to his colleagues elsewhere in Europe, especially in the Nordic countries. There are murders but no detailed close-ups on post mortems or discussions about methods of killing people. Salvo visits the scene of the crime for briefest of moments in general and never takes notes. His right hand man, Fazio (played by Peppino Mazzotta) is the one who always goes out to find out more and comes back to report the results. Salvo's deputy Mimi Augello (Cesare Bocci) has constant problems with women and is basically quite useless as a police officer but is capable of helpful action when it counts.
The Montalbano stories are an interesting mixture of relationships and old fashioned community police work. Salvo is not operating in a vacuum. There are plenty of cultural references, yet it shows that Italians can have a bit of a laugh about their own peculiarities and national characteristics.
In the Nordic noir (Wallander, Killing, Bron) work is the only thing that matters to the officers because they are normally divorced or mentally unbalanced or alcoholics. There is no humour whatsoever. The police inspectors and detectives are incapable of any kind of human warmth, solving crimes with efficiency, spiced with gunfights, clever computer work and the latest surveillance equipment.
Not Salvo. He talks to the neighbours of victims, who are always able to give him a lot of information about lifestyle, family ties, sexual histories and frequently offer their own theories of the possible perpetrators and motives of the crimes. Salvo lives in a luxurious seaside villa. He swims every morning in the open sea and loves spagetti with fresh sea urchins, enjoyed with robust red wine. Salvo has a girlfriend, Livia, who flies in from Genoa every now and then. Mostly they talk on phone. Salvo is relatively faithful, but what can a man do, if there are supermodel types with Sophia Loren lips walking around? We are all wondering, if Salvo is going to give into temptation or not. Often he is not, but you can understand the struggle the poor man goes through.
The Nordic crime writers and producers of television series could perhaps take a deeper look into the world of Il Commissario Montalbano. The current assumption that detailed descriptions of extreme violent acts and expert knowledge of forensic crime scene investigations is what is needed to create "entertainment" could do a little shake-up.
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