11. Sep, 2021

Inspector Montalbano

This is a beautiful Sicily, where Commissario Montalbano swims in the serene blue lagoon before his villa on the shore, a villa with a balconied patio fit for a Roman Emperor's pleasure garden. Here, being an enthusiastic gourmet, he takes great care in setting out some long-awaited meal produced by one of the local chefs whose food he loves. Rarely does he get to eat more than a mouthful before he is summoned by bells. His mobile rings. Sighing, he answers,

"Pronto" and so another murder will begin to be solved.

It is not the Sicily of the Mafia, or if it is, only in the background of some plot. Montalbano has aged a bit over the timespan of the series, as has slimline lothario Mimi (not a Parisian lady in operatic decline but a thinly moustached love machine who just cannot help himself). In Montalbano, all things remain as comfortably familiar as St Mary Mead. Catarella, station buffoon but computer whizz, can still not open the door of Montalbano's office wihout bursting through it in a series of pratfalls. Livia and Salvo Montalbano have never lived together in all the years of their devoted, long distance relationship. They have never split up, either, in spite of Livia having, unnoticed by Salvo, become at some point an entirely different person altogether - also in spite of Salvo constantly failing to turn up as expected to visit her. Well, he has got his dinner to eat, if he ever gets to sit down for it.

Settling in for another summer fuelled series, as the camera pans back from the terraced hillsides of the coastal town, I remark prosaically,

"i wouldn't like to be carrying my shopping up those hills," and coming from someone who hailed from Halifax, with a main gradient of about one in three, that's quite an admission.

The laws of food shopping mean that any supermarket or shops are right at the bottom of any steep hill, while you live on the top of it. I expect it's much the same in Sicily.