The Italian snob

PERIOD drama with extra parasols, this sun-kissed series is set around a hotel on the Italian Riviera.

Following the exploits of a very British family and their guests over the summer of 1926, it features a beautiful house, beautiful setting and a long line of beautiful people.

Natascha McElhone stars as Bella Ainsworth, the owner and moving spirit behind the hotel. She’s a rebel in that she is actually nice to her staff and doesn’t seem to have a stick up her backside.

Which brings us to Lady Latchmere, played by Anna Chancellor, an imperious and hard-to-please guest. She mostly fans herself complaining and says that everything is “simply ghastly”.

More guests to arrive at the hotel for the summer are Rose (Claude Scott-Mitchell) and her mother, Julia (Lucy Akhurst), who turns her nose up at everything.

They are there to evaluate a prospective marriage for Rose and Lucian (Oliver Dench, whose great aunt is Dame Judi), the war veteran son of the hotel’s owners.

But Bella has more immediA ate worries. Her most critical guest, Lady Latchmere, has fallen ill, the new nanny Constance March has yet to arrive, her aristocratic husband, Cecil (Mark Umber), is behaving badly and she finds herself vulnerable to blackmail threats from a local Fascist politician, Signor Danioni.

Political corruption, sexual intrigue and the theft of an ‘old master’ painting combine to form a gripping story, set against Italy’s culture, climate and cuisine.

It’s like a glossy, sunny, Vogue edition of Downton Abbey where family dramas and class wars play out.