This was so, so bad.

How much was 300 million lira worth in 1999 btw?

ooh, who's your daughter allie?

I'm in the unusual (for me) position of actually agreeing with Straker! (If he reads this he'll probably have to go for a lie down!)

I started to watch this programme with high hopes, but turned it off very quickly.

Is it a pantomime?

Not even the scenery and sunshine could make me watch.

I couldn't help making comparisons with this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAs7nO95Ks

Except that was better.

It wasn't that bad It was different! Montalbano is more light-hearted, undemanding viewing set in a totally different culture. Montalbano is a bit like farce at times, judging by the other two episodes I've seen! We've got used to the dark, brooding Scandi/French dramas with a higher standard of acting and you can certainly tell the difference, but I'll give next week's a go. I'm not going to be a subbed drama snob

You're not wrong there, I wouldn't be surprised if it got higher viewing figures too if it were shown instead.

It did start poorly with a bad-tempered baldy git throwing his weight around with his juniors, one of whom seemed to be a stereotype Italian desk sergeant, complete with hand-waving and hystrionics. I wavered.

But it got better. The bad-tempered bloke turned out to be the central character and rather more sympathetic once he'd calmed down.

It's a bit dated - think Bergerac as someone said, being about crime investigation by a strong central character on a sunny picturesque island in the 80s, but no decent cars.

It's certainly different to the Nordic stuff and nowhere near as good but still watchable IMO.

I nearly gave up on this in the first twenty minutes but I stuck with it as the story did seemn interesting. Not a bad show, I won't make a point of watching it as I did with the Danish shows, but I may well have another look next week.

I really enjoyed it. It's not too deep and highbrow and I really like the character of Salvo Montalbano. He's good looking, witty and very Italian which is nice to watch.

I like listening to Italians speaking...very musical and makes a change from hearing Danish, but, I can't remember ever seeing a good Italian thriller.

Unintentionally, I tend to study their furniture and observe what they eat...

Did you see Romanzo Criminale? That was brilliantly done. It was a lot different from IM in acting, writing, in atmosphere and it was rather violent.

c'ept the waiters in a lot of Italian restaurants round here, they are usually Polish.

I saw someone say somewhere online that Luca Zingaretti is a Roman but to play Montalbano he had to get into the Sicilian mindset and master the mannerisms etc. I never realised that Sicilians had a different way of behaving to other Italians or at least those from Rome - maybe it's more of a 'southern' thing.

You can usually tell how old a programme is by the size of the mobiles. Or if they have to use a call box instead.

No I didn't! Maybe BBC4 could squeeze that in somewhere.

You're lucky you've got Italian restaurants where you live.

That's very interesting, I didn't know that. I've noticed though, that Italians tend to speak with their hands.
Sicilian hand movements maybe different from Roman, perhaps?

Very roughly there were 3000 lira to the pound so around £100,000 - actually there were a bit less than that so it may have been closer to £125,000 - but when watching a TV programme you get a ball park figure by dividing by 3 and then change millions to thousands. - or thousands to pounds.

I too watched "The Snack Thief" and thoroughly enjoyed it although, towards the end, I thought it was beginning to sound rather Agatha Chrisie-ish i.e. who did what to whom and why. As somebody else here mentioned earlier I too noticed the sub-titling gaps whilst they were jabbaering away at 300 mph, sorry, I'll re-phrase that - 230 kph.

One thing did puzzle me though: Montalbano spoke in Italian (of course!) whilst Livia spoke in English throughout. I am profoundly Deaf so rely 100% on sub-titles in ALL programmes - those without, unless they're very visual, I don't watch.

Now, what I'd like to know is, was Livia's dialogue dubbed into Italian? As I am rather good at lipreading, I watched her lips and noticed her English dialogue. Can anybody here clarify this for me?

Thanks

According to someone on Twitter, her dialogue was indeed dubbed into Italian. The actress is Austrian but I guess she was speaking English if you say so - very observant of you as I hadn't noticed that myself!

Not to make too pedantic a point, but I hope you're not equating the two


Possibly because you're not deaf.

What you have to remember is that Italy as a country is only around 170 years old and before that there were several different kingdoms on the Italian penisula each with their own different culture

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...y-6776950.html

Yeah I did think of that but it's still observant.