User Reviews

Love 'Inspector Montalbano' and feel that it does a great job bringing freshness to a well-worn genre (not intended as a bad thing, love crime/mystery drama but there's a lot out there with familiar tropes to each other).

Was not sure how its prequel series 'The Young Montalbano' would fare when hearing of it. It sounded interesting to see the great 'Inspector Montalbano' characters in their youth, but also questioned the necessity. With that being said, had mixed expectations before watching 'Endeavour', the prequel series to one of my favourites 'Inspector Morse' and it ended up nearly as great. The same goes for 'The Young Montalbano', it must have been no easy feat to live up to such a good show and have a younger actor for the title character filling in very big shoes but 'The Young Montalbano' manages it splendidly.

Some may question the physical resemblances of the younger cast to 'Inspector Montalbano's' cast for continuity's sake, Mimi is a notable example. That was not an issue at all to me. By 'The Young Montalbano' standards (in fact anything to do with Montalbano in general, every single one of the lesser episodes of 'Inspector Montalbano were better than this one in my opinion), "Room Number Two" is something of a disappointment. It's hardly a bad episode, pretty decent, but up to this point in the show it's easily the weakest seeing as the previous episodes were no less than great.

Getting the issues out of the way, there are far more surprising and exciting denouements elsewhere in 'The Young Montalbano'. This one was disappointing in its predictability and didn't feel cooked all the way through, even more under-cooked than the one for 'Inspector Montalbano's' "The Mud Pyramid". A few of the red herrings are agreed lazy and irrelevant, with the Mafia contribution actually confusing the story rather than adding to it or creating suspense.

However, there is enough to make "Room Number 2" decent. As to be expected, it is beautifully shot and the scenery is stunning, making those who've never been to Italy want to book a holiday there as soon as possible and is a treat for anybody who loves all things Italian. The scenery as always is atmospheric and the use of it very clever, the locale as always is suitably colourful. The music is never over-bearing or low-key with a nice atmosphere and flavour, a lot of it is very cleverly used. The sound effects are remarkably authentic.

Oh, and something that was neglected to be mentioned by me in my reviews for the show and its individual episodes is how the food and the way it's used is enough to make one salivate over, it looks so delicious and almost too good to eat.

Part of 'The Young Montalbano's' appeal how it manages to stay true to what was so good about 'Inspector Montalbano' and is every bit as successful at creating a history that is both incredibly interesting and plausible. The humour is fun and remarkably true in spirit to 'Inspector Montalbano' if not as eccentric as that in the later episodes, the conflict is tense in a nail-biting way and the drama charms and affects. The romance is charming and Livia fares very nicely in her younger version. The characters as their younger selves, for what they lack in physical resemblance, more than make up for that in maintaining the same personalities we know and love the characters for and being just as interesting in development. Catarella when younger is just as hilarious, if more subtle. Even the supporting characters are given a lot of attention.

While the story execution is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, the two cases especially the first one are entertaining and intriguing mostly. The pacing is leisurely but not dull. One just wishes that more thought was put into the ending and the red herrings.

The acting is very good, Michele Riondino had a Herculean task filling the shoes of the incomparable Luca Zingaretti but is more than up to the task and does it more than admirably, balancing comedy, drama and intensity with ease. All the other roles range from solid to great, with Fabrizio Pizzutto and Alessio Vassallo really coming into their own, but through the whole show it's Riondino's show all the way when it comes to the acting honours.

Overall, disappointing but has a lot of good merits. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Sometimes one encounters programs that make you squirm with embarrassment at their sheer ineptitude. This could be due to poor acting, bad cinematography or lazy writing.

"Room Number Two" falls into the final category. For what it's worth, the so-called "plot" centers round a fire at a seedy hotel in which a man perishes after having re-entered during the conflagration. The Inspector (Michele Riondino) is called to investigate and finds himself involved in a complicated web of lies, adultery, and Mafia involvement.

The resolution ends up being wearily predictable; but on the way viewers have had to endure a series of irrelevant red herrings involving conflicts between the two Mafia families that dominate the Vigata area. There is another death along the way, but that has little or nothing to do with the hotel fire.

We can sense the note of desperation in plot-construction, as most of the resolutions are provided by Fazio (Andrea Tidona) coming in and reporting the results of his investigations, thereby fulfilling a continuous deus ex machina role. For his part, Montalbano doesn't do much investigating at all, except at the end when he explains the plot in a sequence strongly reminiscent of Agatha Christie at her worst.

The main subplot of Montalbano's projected marriage to Livia (Sarah Felberbaum) offers some light relief, but nonetheless complicated by our awareness that Montalbano doesn't really want to get hitched at all. Hence most of the so-called "preparations" are a waste of time. Director