Imma Tataranni - Italian Mystery Series

Imma Tataranni  - Italian Mystery In a Fascinating Part of Italy

My new favorite Italian series on MHz Choice is Imma Tataranni, based on the books by Mariolina Venezia.  

Tataranni is the deputy prosecutor for the city of Matera, in Southern Italy.  Wikipedia tells me that Matera is in the region of Basilicata, in one of the "oldest continously inhabited cities in the world."  To learn more about Matera, click HERE.

One thing I've learned from watching European mystery series is that legal prosecutors are also investigators. They work with the police and other law enforcement officers to investigate crimes, and also prosecute criminals in court.

Imma is a fascinating and fun character. She balances her difficult job of legal prosecutor and master detective with a husband, teenage daughter, difficult in-laws, and a mother starting to suffer from dementia.  She is truly a representative from the Sandwich Generation. 

Imma has her own fashion sense, and I applaud her for dressing her way not adopting the very restrictive "professional woman" attire. She gets criticized for it, but she enjoys her own style. As someone who likes to wear bold jewelry often,  it's fun for me to see her  style choices. 

Imma also has a much younger, and very handsome, assistant Corporal Calogiuri.  Imma and Calogiuri become very close.  I like that about this series also.  We don't see the older woman - younger man dynamics in many series. 

Very much a main character in this series is the region of Basilicata and the fascinating history of the area.  Not only stunning visuals, but an ancient and amazing part of the world.

The series does give viewers a bit of the history of this city and this region. If I had a bucket list, I would add visiting Basilicata to it. 

Imma Tataranni is played by Vanessa Scalera who I don't remember seeing in a series or film before. But I will look for her in future series. To find out more about the rest of the cast click HERE.

Oh, and for Montalbano fans,  Cesare Bocci (Mimi) is a guest star in Season 1 of this series.

Below is an interesting review of the series and character of Imma Tataranni:

I would say that stereotypes of women in TV series is sadly not restricted to Italian television.  It is pretty universal.  

New 2016 Season Trailer for MHz Choice

Many New Shows and Some Old Favorites Returning:

Glad both Young and Young-At-Heart Montalbano will be back

A French Village (Un Village Français) and MHz Choice

I've been binge watching the second season of A French Village on MHz Choice this holiday.

This is the first series I've really watched on MHz's new online subscriber streaming service (with English subtitles).  I watched the first season of A French Village when MHz Networks wast still broadcasting international TV series on cable. Still too early to know how I'm going to like the move from cable to streaming. All I know is I'm now going to be paying a monthly fee and I still have MHz series in reruns on my TV. Right now it still comes with one of my cable bundles, together with the other international news channels the MHz network broadcasts, including France 24. 

There have been 6 seasons of this series that started in 2009, with a 7th airing in 2016.  Right now you can watch the first two seasons on MHz Choice, plus the first two episodes of Season 3.  The rest of the season's episodes will be posted once a week on Tuesdays (I think) until January 26.

The series follows the lives, losses, and loves of residents of the fictional village of Villeneuve after occupation by German forces in 1940's Vichy France.  During the time of the first three series, France has been defeated by Nazi Germany, and the Vichy regime, led by Marshal Petain, is now the government of  this new France. The Germans  occupy the northern part of the country. Villeneuve is an occupied village.  During series 1-3, 1940-1942, most of the villagers believe the Germans have pretty much won the war, and they are in a temporary state of "collaboration" between France and Nazi Germany. 

The series follows several families, including the children, and how each individual is affected and reacts to this sudden and violent occupation. Family members are divided and on different sides of the political struggle. Some are collaborators, some are active in the resistance, some try to carry on in quiet desperation. Some benefit quite nicely from the war and collaboration with the Germans. Some suffer the loss of liberty, torture, and death. 

There are many characters, some major some minor, but we get to know all of them and the effect the war has on their lives. One thing I truly like about the series is that we get to know intimately characters from all sides, even the occupying Germans. Even under these circumstances, life goes on, people fall in and out of love, people get sick and need attention, children go to school, chores must be done...

What would we all do under these circumstances? Would we risk our lives and join the resistance, or convince ourselves we're doing good by collaborating with the occupiers? I don't think we truly know what we would do.

Too many characters in this series to talk about in this short "review."  But I think one of my favorite families, the Larcher's, are a good example of what the series does so well.

Daniel Larcher (Robin Renucci) is the respected middle-aged village doctor when the German's occupy the village. He's soon enlisted to be the town's Vichy major (and so also German collaborator). He takes the job in the belief he can do good this way. But is he really doing good. He and his volatile wife, Hortense (Audrey Fleurot), who have no children, find themselves with a newborn baby they "adopt" in the confusion of the early days of the occupation. Daniel has a younger brother, Marcel (Fabrizio Rongione), who is a Communist and joins the anti-Nazi resistance. But Marcel also works, and is a loyal manager, in the lumber company of German collaborator, Schwartz (Thierry Godard). He has a darling 10 year old son, Gustave (Maxim Driesen), who is often torn between his uncle and his father. 

I find I like both Daniel and Marcel, and feel for the consequences of the decisions they make. Decisions that affect the life and death of others. 

Well, have to get back to binge watching. I have two episodes of S3 to watch tonight still.  

I would recommend A French Village wherever you can find it to watch.  

There are also a series of interesting and informative interviews with those that lived through the war, many were children then, and also scholars with some historical background to the events we see in the series. 

I would also recommend MHz Choice. Yes, something more to pay for, but some of these programs you can't find on Amazon or Netflix, and they are good to great international series from non-English speaking Europe.  (And a few UK/NZ/AUS series also.) Now everyone in the US at least can watch, if you subscribe. 

All series and extras with English subtitles.

For those that speak/understand French -a short interview:

International Series: The Churchmen - Ainsi Soient-ils

MHz Choice has been having major problems during it's launch.  I talked about MHz Choice in an earlier post Here.

The idea was to move their International Mystery and other international programs from cable and broadcast to all streaming. Well, lets just say they launched before they were ready and now they have taken down the streaming site and will re-launch in the fall.  

Part of the problem was they couldn't make their "episode catch-up" feature work. If you didn't catch the episode when it aired live, you were out of luck.  Because the series were no longer on cable TV, I couldn't DVR. So I managed to only follow two series and I gave up on the rest.

One of the series I did manage to follow for the three episodes that aired was The Churchmen (Ainsi Soient-ils). 

The series follows five young men who have decided to join the priesthood. We meet them on their first day at the Capuchin Seminary in Paris as they start their journey to God.  

 In the first three episodes we get glimpses of why each of them has chosen this path, and also their doubts, and the doubts of their loved ones, that they've chosen the right path. 

In addition to their education at the Seminary, they also are attending university. They find the challenge of dealing with and confronting the modern, very secular, world that doesn't always accept them. 

We also get to meet and know their teachers and mentors, the older men (and some women) of the church. We see their personal triumphs, their faith, and their very human failings.  

 

The series also follows the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church, and the struggle for power, from the head of the Seminary, all the way to the Vatican.  We also see the all too human challenges and disappointments of of the mid-life priest in the field. 

But I like that we also see the joy of the faith in our young seminarians, and in the most senior of their teachers. 

The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful...all of this in just three episodes!

I look forward to the return of The Churchmen on MHz Choice this fall and recommend looking for this French TV series on local PBS stations, or other international series sites, or by subscribing to MHz Choice when it returns.  (Hopefully MHz Networks will be successful this time.) 

 Main Cast:

Jean-Luc Bideau

Thierry Gimenez

Michel Duchaussoy

Julien Bouanich

David Baiot

Clément Manuel                            

Clément Roussier

Samuel Jouy

Guy Denize

 

New Project for Richard Armitage - Clearance - Directed by Aku Louhimies and New Spooks Interview from Empire

Thank you to Richard Armitage for letting us know of your exciting new project.

@akuurban check out 'Frozen Land' and '8 Ball' by Aku Louhimies. His work is extraordinary. Excited to be on board with his next adventure.

— Richard Armitage (@RCArmitage) May 13, 2015

"Clearance tells the story of a hardened mine clearance expert Ray (Armitage) and his pregnant partner (Harris), who are kidnapped in South Sudan by a notorious warlord. To secure their freedom, Ray is forced to cross a vast minefield to retrieve a mysterious case for the warlord. The film is set to begin shooting in South Africa in November." The Hollywood Reporter



And Interview on Empire: Spooks an Oral History with many of the cast including
Richard Armitage:

http://www.empireonline.com/spooks/

What a morning!  

In honor of Richard's new film project, my favorite song, from one of my favorite Finnish Mysteries (RAID):

International Mysteries and More Move from Cable to Streaming

 One of my favorite TV Channels is moving International Mystery and other International drama and comedy programming to streaming starting tomorrow, May 3.

I have mixed feelings about this, as I did when MHz moved from a PBS broadcast channel to Cable TV.  It may be a good thing for those of us that subscribe, and can afford to do so. At $7.99 a month it's less costly than subscribing to cable.  But you need a good Internet connection.

You see, I've watched MHz Networks for must be 20 years or more. When I first started watching it was a small Public TV station in Northern Virginia.  It was a privilege to have international mysteries, movies, and programs, news, available over regular broadcast channels. All we had and needed was a TV and an antenna. (By international programming I mean non-English, non-UK, European television programs, and movies from all over the world). 

The movies  and programs were introduced for many years by Michael Jeck.  I loved and still miss Prof. Jeck's introduction to the weekly International Mystery programs.  

These intros were not everyone's cup of tea. Some of my co-workers who also watched the shows at the time didn't like his informative and quirky introductions. They somehow found it insulting that anything had to be introduced to them, and they didn't like the stories about the filming of the series, or information about the actors, the directors, and etc. They found it boring. I however enjoyed the background information, and background about the directors, and writers, and books, and actors, that Prof. Jeck provided. I hope if anyone at MHz Choice reads this that they bring him back, at least for introductions to some of the programs. 

He also years ago interviewed a younger Mikael Persbrandt. It was a long interview broadcast on MHz Networks, I think an hour. Persbrandt was then, as now, co-starring in Beck with Peter Haber.  They've only broadcast a small bit of the interview since then. I once contacted Prof. Jeck about the interview, but he said he didn't own the rights of course, MHz Networks did. 

Anyway, back to the news of the moment.  I'll see how I feel about MHz Choice after it starts tomorrow.  Yes, I subscribed.  I'll have to review my Cable TV bundles now, see what I can cut out.

International Mystery: Johan Falk Series

What makes someone risk his life every day for the sake of others? 

What makes someone risk the torture and death of his loved ones? 

What makes someone risk being ostracized by family, knowing what they think they know is totally wrong? 

What makes someone risk their soul and voluntarily go deeper and deeper into hell?

Those are the questions I've been asking every week when I watch this new season of Johan Falk, now playing on Sundays at 9:00pm on MHz Networks International Mystery series:

I’m obsessed every time I watch an episode not with our lead character, Johan Falk, but with Lisa.

Currently on Sundays MHz Networks is showing "Season 2" of this Swedish police series, Johan Falk. The series so far consists of 15 films released between 1999 and 2013.  From reading about Swedish or Nordic Noir series in general, I know that some episodes are seen on TV, some are released in movie theaters and some are released only as DVD's.  I'm not sure where this current group of films we are viewing fall in the 15 film series.  I tried to figure out when the episodes with Lisa began and ended, if they did, but still not sure.  I see on IMDB that an episode is now filming for airing in Sweden in 2015. Hope we'll see it here in the US. 

Last year I watched the first season of Johan Falk starring Jacob Eklund as the lead character.  In the first season we see Swedish policeman Falk both at work and in his personal life. What started out as what seemed like a local robbery turns into a case of international crime and criminals. The first season took us through a number of cases that Johan solves, despite resistance from his superiors. He attracts the attention of Europol, but refuses the job. At the end he's dissatisfied and leaves his job as a policeman.  It's been a while since I watched the first series, so the facts about the individual cases are a bit fuzzy. 

Jacqueline Ramel 

As for his personal life, when we first meet Johan he's having an affair with his colleague, Anja, played by Jacqueline Ramel.

In one of the crimes he's investigating in Season 1 he meets Helene Andersson.  At first she's a "person of interest", and later a potential victim of the case Johan is investigating. During the course of the episode Helene and Johan fall in love.  It's interesting that Helene is played by Marie Richardson, wife of series star Eklund. Richardson is a familiar face for those that watch Swedish mystery/police series.

Jacob Eklund and Marie Richardson

I liked and recommend the first series of Johan Falk films. It's a good police procedural with international intrigue, good acting, and conflicted characters. But I have to confess it's this second series airing now that has grabbed me by the throat and won't let go.  

The second series opens nine years later. Johan has spent a decade working for Interpol, but is tired of his mostly desk job.  He wants to go out into the field again and be there when the action happens. He accepts a job in a special unit GSI in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Johan and Helene have now been together for ten years and have a young son.  Helene has a career in marketing, if my memory is correct, and like most two-career couples, they must decide what to do.  To join Johan in Gothenburg, she must quit her job and move. Right now she's still at her job in another city, and visits Johan on the weekends.  To add to the complicated personal life, Johan's former girlfriend Anja is now the head of police in the same police station where the GSI special unit operates from.

But let's be frank, the center of attention in the second series is Lisa.   In order to avoid any major spoilers for any that have not seen at least the first episode, read on (click on Read More below) if you want to know more about Lisa and the actors in this series (SPOILERS).

Marie's Mind for Murder (Marie Brand) - International Mystery Series

As a middle-aged woman I'm always happy to see us portrayed as competent, capable, important and attractive on television and in films.  I'm also happy when I find women characters in general who remind me of real people and not moonlighting supermodels.  

One international police procedural series I'm enjoying for the reasons above, but for much more, is Marie's Mind for Murder, known in Germany as Marie Brand.  For those of us in the United States the series, the second for us, is now playing on MHz Networks Saturdays and you can check if it's playing in your area, but also you can watch the episodes online for a few days after the episode airs on TV.  

http://www.mhznetworks.org/programs/full-episodes

The first series I watched, Marie returns to the police force after her father dies. She is a bit rusty at first, and her colleagues think she's been away too long, but she's ready to prove them wrong.  Her new partner is a younger detective, Jurgen Simmel, who is not at first too happy to be paired with this middle-aged woman. Simmel is a ladies man in his own mind, though that's a bit of a cover for his insecurities.  As they work together and get to know one another as people,  Simmel discovers Marie is a great detective, and Marie discovers Simmel is lonely and deep down a nice man.  

In the first series that played earlier here in the US, Marie was happily married or in a happy relationship. She and her husband seemed to have a relationship full of laughter and mutual admiration. He was an expert on reptiles and Marie seemed to share his passion for these creatures.  He wasn't happy when a murder happened right before their vacation or ruined their plans, and Marie had to go to work.  I liked their relationship and was sorry to see that in this second season Marie is alone.

Now in this second season seems there might be a bit of romance in the future for Marie and Simmel. There's part of me that's happy about this development, since we rarely see a May/December relationships when the younger partner is a man and the older partner is a woman.  Nothing has happened yet, but it's clear that Simmel is very interested in Marie, but she's still keeping him at a romantic distance.  I can understand Marie's reluctance, since I don't find Simmel an interesting man, though he's a good detective. Maybe as a viewer I need to be wooed a little more by this man too. 


Marie's character I like very much, she's a brave and resourceful woman, still fighting to be respected in a male dominated profession, yet keeping her sense of humor and her compassion for others. Marie relies on her instincts and her "little grey cells" to solve crimes. Like many fictional detectives, she's a bit unorthodox in her methods, and gets into more trouble than she should, but it all leads to the murderer at the end. 

In between the crimes and the police work there's humor in the series. I feel there's probably a lot of humor that I miss not speaking German, in the conversations between the characters, and especially between Marie and Simmel. But if a bit is lost in translation, you can still catch the humor in their body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. 

From my little bit of research the series started in 2008 and the last episode aired in Germany this year.  I don't know if it's been renewed beyond 2014. Looks like they've filmed 13 episodes so far. 

Mariele Millowitsch

Marie is played by German actor Mariele Millowitsch.   She comes from a German family of actors. Her family owns a theater in Cologne managed through the generations by her grandfather, father and now brother. Because of the family profession, Mariele grew up performing in the theater.

Found it interesting that she studied veterinary medicine in college, but never practiced.  The pull of the family business proved too strong and after graduation she returned to the stage.

She's known in Germany for her roles in other popular television series before Marie Brand and also internationally for film and TV roles. 

Hinnerk Schonemann

Jurgen Simmel is played by actor Hinnerk Schonemann.   He's been in many international films, including one of my favorite, The Lives of Others (2006) and War Horse (2011).

  

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 A clip of the series - German only

Nicolas Le Floch - International French Mystery In The Time Of Luis XV

This French police mystery has many things close to my heart: dashing men in period costumes, great swordfights, gorgeous locations, and a conflicted hero at the center of it all.

Commissaire Nicolas Le Floch is a master police detective, protecting citizens and nobles alike. He's sworn to serve King Luis XV and protect the monarchy, but he believes in fairness and justice above politics. Nicolas is also the illegitimate son of the Marquis de Ranreuil. He was raised in Brittany by Canon Floch and educated by the Jesuits. Later the young man is sent for by his godfather Ranreuil (who he then finds out is his real father) to work for the head of the police in Paris, Antoine de Sartine. (Antoine de Sartine is a real historical figure in the time of Luis XV and XVI , played in the series by actor Francois Caron.)

The series is based on the historical mystery novels by Jean-François Parot. Parot is a French diplomat who as ambassador promoted the use of food in diplomacy. As a result of Parot's interest in food, or maybe just because he's French, the Le Floch novels feature many descriptions of food and of Nicolas' gourmet friends.

Parot

Like many historical novels and series, the episodes feature real historical characters, like Luis XV and his mistress Madame Pompadour, and many others. Part of the appeal of the series is seeing the interaction between historical figures and fictional characters and how that plays out in the resolution of the crime.

Nicolas is both an outsider and insider, moving easily between the aristocracy and the criminal elements of society. Like all great detectives he uses his powers of deduction and even unorthodox methods to solve the crime. Though he loyally serves the court and the letter of the law, he has his own moral compass. He's also a bit of a "Jacques Bond" character with the ladies, they all want him. 

Nicolas Le Floch is played by Jérôme Robart. 

The link below has the TV Series website from France 2 that includes an interview with Robard (in French only):

http://www.france2.fr/serie-fiction/nicolas-le-floch

Below are two fan videos, one with the theme music for the series Nicolas Le Floch and the other some behind-the-scenes photos of the series being filmed in Versailles and other locations.

Nicolas Le Floch is now playing on Sunday nights at 9:00pm on MHzNetworks.  Check their website to see if it's showing in your area:

http://www.mhznetworks.org/mhz-worldview/affiliates

http://www.mhznetworks.org/programs/full-episodes

If you're like me and watching Downton Abbey on Sunday nights, you can always set your DVR like I do for Nicolas. 

Update  March 8: Nicolas returns tonight at 9:00pm: 

http://www.mhznetworks.org/watch/nicolas-le-floch-grand-huntsman-trailer