Brennero

When Jannik Sinner won his first Grand Slam title in Australia in 2024, Italy discovered a new Italian sporting hero (tennis) but they were initially unsure and very curious about this redhead who was more comfortable in German than in Italian. Here was a person who was supposedly Italian but who, as a South Tyrolean, grew up speaking exclusively German, only learnt to speak Italian after the age of 10, and spoke it with a foreign accent. Do we speak German in Italy a majority asked ??

In the first contemporary Italian series about its German speaking region, South Tyrol, the plot weaves a complex murder inquiry which spans five decades, into the historical and contemporary complexity of South Tyrol. It is superb, fantastic, rivetting. The direction and acting is first class, mixing modern South Tyrol, and Italy, with "the way things used to be", along with many side plots.

It was a wonderful watch, with the bonus of a great musical score. An absolutely brilliant find.

Watch it !

The cat and mouse shenanigans in the first twenty minutes is both illogical and so irritating , that you might not make it past that point ? How on earth does a member of the public gain access to a press conference in the procurator's building unchallenged and sit there with his hood up ? A room full of cops and no one notices or reacts ? The overarching feeling is of a poorly funded production with some seriously overrated cast members full of their own self importance and most of it off script, i.e. Delivery , hence the melodramatic atmosphere . It could have been so much better given the location .

This Italian series is set in the South Tyrol region; an area where the majority are German speakers and there are tensions with the Italian speaking community. When a member of the German speaking community is killed the authorities suspect a serial killer dubbed 'The Monster', who killed five people several years previously and was never caught may be back. Prosecutor Eva Kofler is put in charge of the case and soon seeks the help of Paolo Costa, the only policeman who saw The Monster up close but has been off duty since a crash in which he lost a leg, and his partner. Over the course of the series a number of cases are dealt with but the case of The Monster is never forgotten. Eva also has some family issues to deal with.

I really enjoyed this series; our two leads have a good, if somewhat abrasive chemistry and the cases are interesting. Elena Radonicich and Matteo Martari impress in these roles and the rest of the cast is solid too. Here in the UK each of the four two-part stories are combined to make single feature length episodes, which I think worked well. The location is an important part of the story, not just because it provides a scenic backdrop but because South Tyrol's sometimes troubled history provides interesting motivations. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to fans of Euro-crime drama.

These comments are based on watching the series in Italian with English subtitles.