Streaming series review - Makari: Season One

Makari: Season One *** (out of 5) (NR) This Italian TV dramedy series is named after a Sicilian coastal village (Macari) that provides the lovely setting for a season of four light-hearted crimes in which our set of amateurs become involved. The star is Saverio (Claudio Gioe), a fortyish writer whose lost his high-profile political press-agent gig due to an even higher-profile screw-up. Tail between his legs and nearly broke, he returns to the village where his father still owns a run-down vacation home, and tries to start a new life in safe, familiar environs.

He's greeted by old pal Peppe (Domenico Centamore) – a lovable, overly chatty lug who variably helps and annoys our putative hero as he settles in. Saverio’s next acquisition is a girlfriend. He meets a charming, bright waitress, Suleima (Ester Pantano), interrupting her architecture studies to earn money during the town’s tourist-laden summer, and gradually wins her over. In the first episode, a young boy goes missing, and the three join the search and tackle the mystery of why he vanished, and who might have made it happen. That tale establishes our principals and their roles in the remaining episodes.

The four diverse stories are essentially made-for-TV movies, running just over 100 minutes, with separate crimes to solve, while developing relationships among the characters. Though each is a stand-alone event, watching them in sequence is advisable. Saverio is no action figure, nor does he go out of his way to get involved in these mysteries. When he does, it’s to be helpful to others, and possibly provide material for the novelist career he’d started before the call of journalism and politics changed that game plan. His sleuthing is mainly dependent on his friendly, approachable demeanor and intellect. Suleima is helpful, albeit largely from a distance. Peppe is the more active cohort, though his big, friendly puppy nature tends to provide more comic relief than useful support.

The stories are well-written, with less-than-obvious solutions, as they unfold at leisurely pace befitting its sun-drenched environs. Sicilian locations are lovely, and provide a complementary backdrop for the tales. Very little violence or gory business occurs on-screen. The tenor is akin to Terence Hill’s Don Matteo, or more familiar British series like Father Brown and Doc Martin, in the way it’s fleshed out by casts of locals we get comfortable with. Gioe’s Saverio is quite likeable. Pantano’s Suleima is a real gem, looking just beautiful enough to realistically fit the rest of the premise, while showing intellect, independence and street smarts to make her a fascinating character. Centamore’s Peppe is sort of a cross between Italy’s late, great Bud Spencer, and Zorro’s buffoonish Sergeant Garcia.

Those who enjoy this quartet of gentle – relatively speaking for murders most foul – adventures will be pleased to know a second season with three more is already running in Italy, and almost certainly will follow these across the Atlantic to our screens.

(Makari: Season One, in Italian with subtitles, streams on MHzChoice as of 10/18/22.)