Natascha McElhone plays Bella Ainsworth, an English widow who has sunk her inheritance into Hotel Portofino, a clifftop villa painted the colour of peach ice cream. While her stuffed-shirt husband Cecil (Mark Umbers) rattles the cocktail shaker, Bella juggles unpaid bills, a closeted son, and the advances of Count Carlo Albani, whose title is older than the newly arrived fasci di combattimento. The first season keeps the politics on the terrace: officers drink chinotti in white gloves, guests play lawn tennis, and a dead body washes up between the sun-loungers.
Season two moves the action to 1927, when the hotel is commandeered as officers’ quarters and Bella’s accountant is shot for keeping two sets of books. Filmed across Croatia’s Adriatic coast with 800 extras in period uniforms, the show became the country’s largest television production in 2022. Baker’s scripts swap drawing-room whodunit for espionage thriller: Lucian forges passports in the wine cellar, Paola hides Partisan leaflets inside focaccia, and the concierge listens at keyholes for the OVRA.
The third series, renewed in 2023, lands in 1929 as Mussolini’s 1929 Concordat with the Vatican makes priests and policemen interchangeable. Bella sells the last of her jewellery to buy exit visas, but the port is mined and the trains no longer run on time. Baker keeps the dialogue English, letting Italian officers switch to their own language only when giving orders they do not want guests to understand.
Production Details
BritBox / 3 Seasons / 18 Episodes / 2022 - Present
Created by: Adam Wimpenny
Writer(s): Matt Baker
Producer(s): Julie Bains
Cinematography: Erol Zubčević
Main Cast
Natascha McElhone as Bella Ainsworth
Mark Umbers as Cecil Ainsworth
Louisa Binder as Constance March
Oliver Dench as Lucian Ainsworth
Olivia Morris as Alice Mays-Smith
Carolina Gonnelli as Paola
Elizabeth Carling as Betty Scanlon
Louis Healy as Billy Scanlon
Pasquale Esposito as Vincenzo Danioni
Daniele Pecci as Count Carlo Albani
Petar Benčić as
Lily Frazer as Claudine Pascal
