dolce vita in the shadow of fascism on Chérie 25

Neither Downton Abbey, neither The Crazy Adventure of the Durrells (in Corfu) will not have quenched the appetite of the British for the Roaring Twenties and the interwar period. Hotel Portofino, launched by Chérie 25, is the perfect hybridization of the two series. The struggles of masters and their servants seasoned with the Mediterranean sun. The result is a sweet ensemble that helps extend the holiday but remains predictable and smooth.

Daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Bella Ainsworth (the distinguished and too rare Natascha McElhone, Californication) convinced husband and children to forget the trauma of the Great War by moving to the Ligurian town to open a hotel there. The privileged English-speaking clientele resides there in the summer. Not sure that this is enough to restore the taste for living and painting to his son Lucian, survivor of the trenches or to console his sister Alice, a war widow with a young child and determined to find a husband.

On the edge of the precipice

Such an idyllic setting can only attract the clouds. Bella’s husband squandered his fortune and dipped into the establishment’s treasury. For the family to get back on its feet, Lucian would have to marry the cute but insipid daughter of the wealthy Julia Drummond-Ward. Obviously in this year 1926, the heart of the young man leans elsewhere. More interesting is the presence on the outskirts of notables, mafiosos and Italian domestic workers more or less won over to Mussolini’s regime. The Duce seems to some much more popular than the Communists. But this din of a world on the edge of the precipice remains distant.

Drawing from the recipes of gender specialist, Julian Fellowes, creator of The Gilded Age and Downton Abbeythe author ofPortofino Hotel, Matt Baker, imagines loves transgressing class barriers, between nannies with heavy secrets, adultery and theft of master paintings. We can even count on an acerbic character à la Maggie Smith in the presence of Anna Chancellor (the “duck face” of Four weddings and a funeral) as a 50-year-old snob and hypochondriac horrified by cooking with olive oil and seafood. This character brings a welcome shift in the middle of fairly conventional dialogues. Over the course of these six episodes, the magnificent landscapes remain. Those of Portofino of course. But also those of the Croatian cities of Rijeka, Lovran and Rovinj. This postcard atmosphere seduced our neighbors since Portofino Hotel will reopen its doors to new residents in a season 2.