Hotel Portofino, available on Sky and in streaming on Now from 28 February, is a British TV series (6 eps) set in Italy during Mussolini’s rise to power about 100 years ago. The lead character, played by Natasha McElhone (Californication, Designated Survivor), is Bella Ainsworth, daughter of a rich English industrialist, who moves to Portofino on the Riviera di Levante in Liguria to open a hotel, gain her financial independence and forget the darkness and horror of recent WWI. The hotel is the setting for an intricate thriller that complicates everything. The cast features Mark Umbers as Bella’s charming husband, Lord Cecil Ainsworth, Anna Chancellor as Lady Latchmere, a wealthy hotel guest, Italian actors Daniele Pecci and Lorenzo Richelmy as Count Carlo Albani and his son Roberto, and Rocco Fasano, a local young anti-Fascist.
The quintessentially British writing provides an original counterbalance to the all-Italian beauty of the sun-bathed, sea-kissed Ligurian landscape, in addition to the famous culinary delicacies of the area. The production also shot in Croatia.
The series is produced by Eagle Eye Drama, written and created by Matt Baker and directed by Adam Wimpenny. The producers include Julie Baines, Jo McGrath and Walter Iuzzolino, MD of Eagle Eye Drama.