The new PBS series 'Hotel Portofino' transports you to the 1920s Italian Riviera

How writer Matt Baker conjured the idea of “Hotel Portofino:”

“I would like to take you back to a rather damp and cold and dark autumn day in London back in 2020 when we were deep in the second lockdown as a result of the COVID pandemic,” said Baker. “I wanted to write something which was, given the mood of the time, unashamedly escapist and unashamedly sunny. I suppose the other thing to add to that is that I’ve always had this enduring love of Italy.”

“In conversation with Walter… we talked about setting a drama both in Italy, but also in the period of the 1920s, partly because it’s an exciting period in history, but also because there are obvious parallels between the 1920s and a hundred years later, the 2020s. So Walter is a native of the Ligurian region where Portofino is found, and between the three of us, we came up with the idea of setting a drama based in a hotel on the Italian Riviera.”

A primer on the hotel’s many characters and their intrigues:

“The core of the story, it has an ‘upstairs-downstairs’ dynamic at its heart. So you have the Ainsworth family; you have Bella Ainsworth, who’s the matriarch of the family. She’s the moving spirit behind her family’s move to Italy. I think her idea is, they’ve been through personal trauma. Her daughter has been widowed, lost her husband during the war. Her son has been injured during the war, and she thinks moving to Italy will give him a fresh start,” recounted Baker. “Her aristocratic husband, Cecil Owensworth, who our is the anti-hero, I guess. Cecil’s very charming, but he’s also a bit of a cad, and he’s sort of preying on Bella’s good deeds, if you like, to live a rather dilettante lifestyle.”

He went on, “The beauty of setting a drama in a hotel is you have various guests if you like, the various characters, whether they’re rather aristocratic and haughty [like] matriarch Lady Latchmere and her traveling companion. An English tennis champion and his wife, an American art dealer, and his wife… and then around that, obviously there’s the locals and Italian characters, including a local fascist dignitary, the local leader of the fascist party, who’s probably our most conventional baddie.”

“Hotel Portofino”’s lingering meditations on music, art and beauty:

“I’m a raving opera fan and lover,” said Iuzzolino. “When we were brainstorming the show… we were all throwing in elements that reflect our own passion and love and enthusiasm for Italy, and for the subject matter, and for storytelling in general. And the idea, first of all, of music and the gramophone was very dear to both of us. I remember Matt, I left you a vocal message on the way to the tube, and Matt responded very quickly, saying, ‘That’s a good idea.’ It can create a very choral moment where we pause for a moment. We don’t just necessarily propel the action forward, but we pause, and we allow all characters to come together and to listen to echoes of the music in and around the hotel, which felt like a really lovely, magical part.”

“The overall and overriding idea is the redeeming power… of beauty, but also the unsettling power of beauty,” Iuzzolino said. “You were referring to existing literature in this space earlier on. Of course, there’s E. M. Forster and ‘Enchanted April,’ ‘Room With a View,’ ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread.’ So there’s a wonderful and illustrious tradition of British literature of this sort of innocence abroad, in which buttoned-up, pale Brits go to Italy and are exposed to the sensual, ravishing beauty of the country, and that somehow transforms them and transforms their outlook on life. And sometimes with positives, other times with very dramatic consequences.”

“Hotel Portofino” can be streamed with membership via WABE TV.