Foreign affairs:

Opening the world of quality viewing with Walter Presents.

Walter Iuzzolino is someone who knows what sort of TV shows he likes.

The television producer turned drama series curator is the Walter behind Walter Presents, a curated collection of foreign programmes available on TVNZ OnDemand.

It’s his job to choose programmes for his platform where you can view offerings such as Czech thriller The Lens or French crime drama Vanished By The Lake.

Iuzzolino says he looks for series that have received critical acclaim and been a commercial success in their home countries. The shows must also have “impeccable quality in acting, writing and directing”.

“I always watch (a series) from beginning to end,” he says.

“I never ever buy a show that I haven’t entirely enjoyed. I don’t do this cynically at all and if, I say, get bored by episode two or three, then the audience will get bored even quicker.”

Iuzzolino hails from Genoa in

Italy but moved to the UK more than two decades ago.

He has worked as a commissioning editor for prime-time television in Britain but moved away from that sort of work more than seven years ago when Walter Presents began.

At the start of each foreign series, he chats to the camera providing viewers with a brief outline of what it is about. It wasn’t his choice to do this presenting job. The idea came from television executives.

“I was quite shy about it because I’d never been in front of the camera,” he says.

“And, if anything, I’d always been a producer and a very behind-the-scenes person. So I wasn’t particularly comfortable at the beginning. But then I thought, ‘What the hell, let’s give it a try’ and then in the end I know the shows. I love them. It’s my life watching them, curating them.

“It’s such a joy in a way as a job to be able to talk about things you love

and to be able to encourage people to sample them and to experience them. So I gave it an honest try and then in the end it worked really well.”

If you’re wondering why his service isn’t called Walter Iuzzolino Presents, there is an explanation.

“The surname, I’m very fond of,” he says. “But it’s almost unpronounceable, even in Italy.

“Whenever I’m talking to someone and I have to give the spelling for anything, whether it’s in the supermarket or wherever, I go ‘I U Z Z’ and they go ‘Z Z?’ In England it’s even harder.”

Iuzzolino is a proud Italian man and in pre-Covid-19 times he would try to visit his homeland on a monthly basis.

He recalls being exposed to foreign shows as a child.

“I don’t know if you know this but in Italy, television is dubbed,” he says. “That is something I really don’t like. I much prefer subtitles with the original voice of an actor and the original performance.

“But the advantage of dubbing, when I was growing up, was that it meant that language was not a barrier to the appreciation of international content.

“So when you grew up, in Italy on a Monday night you have an Italian show like, maybe like a mafia thriller. Then on a Tuesday you have an American show like say a Desperate Housewives-style show. On Wednesday we’ll have a historical piece from Germany or from France.

“So when you grow up, you’re very used to all these textures and variety. But because it is all (dubbed into) Italian, you don’t make the distinction to say, ‘Oh, this is French, this is German’.

“But it means that you’re exposed to a lot of really interesting stuff. When I moved to London 22 years ago now to study filmmaking, I was quite surprised by the lack of that variety. Of course, there was wonderful British television and wonderful American television.” However, Iuzzolino saw a gap in the market.

“Coming from Italy I knew that there was a lot of wonderful, very commercial, very fun, very sexy stuff that was incredibly enjoyable to watch,” he says. “And it was never reaching these shores.”

If you’re wondering what show is a good place to start on Walter Presents, Iuzzolino has a suggestion.

“I would say start with an absolute timeless classic, which is The Adulterer,” he says.

He compares it to HBO’s US drama The Affair.

“It’s a fantastic crime drama,’ he says. “So it’s got two people that should never have been together, and they fall in love.

“That triggers an incredible retaliation in criminal terms.

“So that’s really riveting. And I love it. It’s three seasons of it.

“It’s a Dutch drama and it’s incredibly strong.”

The Adulterer streams on