Crime
Grosse Pointe Garden Society
The seemingly charming members of The Grosse Pointe Garden Society hide their involvement in a murder in NBC’s drama.
Welcome to Hotel Portofino, where the sun is always shining, the water is always clear—and everyone always has something to hide.
That last part has become increasingly clear to wealthy Brit Bella Ainsworth, who moved her family to Portofino, Italy, and opened the hotel in the early 1920s, and who has been witness to her guests’ secrets and scandals ever since. But the guests keep coming: It’s a little slice of England in the Italian Riviera, perfect for wealthy tourists looking for a laid-back vacation.
Bella’s family, however, is somewhat less than perfect. Her son, Lucian, is a lady’s man through and through (although his feelings for hotel nanny Constance may be a bit more serious than socially acceptable). Her daughter, Alice, is perpetually adrift in life. And Cecil…well, Bella’s husband has never met a get-rich-quick scheme he didn’t fall for. And as the seasons wear on, both husband and wife fall for other people, too.
The drama doesn’t end at the hotel’s doors. Benito Mussolini is Italy’s swaggering prime minister, and even picture-perfect Portofino is not immune from the rise of fascism. Every day, it seems like the streets are more and more crowded with Blackshirts—Mussolini’s personal soldiers. And with Cecil getting involved with Danioni, a fascist politician who moonlights as a smuggler, it seems nearly impossible for Bella to keep political strife off her doorstep.
But, affairs and brewing world war aside, the Hotel Portofino is open for business! May we take your bags?
Upstairs/downstairs British period dramas are by no means a new breed. (You can trace them all the way back to, literally, Upstairs, Downstairs in 1971.) There’s little wonder why. The premise of a wealthy family managing their hardworking staff while historical conflict looms creates endless possibilities for drama. Will Lord [insert name here] do his social duty and marry Lady [insert name here], or will he follow his heart and be with the sweet yet destitute maid instead? How will our beloved ensemble deal with the arrival of [insert historical event]? It’s a tried-and-true formula that has enthralled audiences for decades.
Hotel Portofino plays right into that formula. The Italian Riviera forms the backdrop for romance, intrigue, betrayal and heartbreak among a wide cast of characters—plus, of course, there’s enough 1920s glamor for any period-piece purist.
Unfortunately, following the upstairs/downstairs formula means Hotel Portofino also succumbs to its pitfalls.
Since a significant amount of our conflict comes from the making and breaking of romantic relationships, issues with intimacy and sensuality are all but inevitable. Affairs between characters, some simply outside the bounds of social class and some extramarital, are nearly constant, and divorce is excused as “commonplace” as the 1920s progresses into the modern era.
The silver lining is that we’re never shown anything explicit. Characters kiss and wake up (clothed) in bed together, but beyond some suggestive references, that’s as far as it goes. The issue here is more about principle. In Portofino, the laws of marriage are apparently more like guidelines, able to be bent and twisted in favor of “true love.”
You won’t find any glaringly explicit content if you check into the Hotel Portofino. It might even help fill that Downton Abbey-shaped hole in your heart. But be wary when unpacking your bags. We’ve gotten reports of an adverse theme or two lurking in the closets.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
The year is 1929, and tourist season has finally come to an end. Bella and Cecil each pursue romantic entanglements outside their marriage, leading Cecil to finally request a divorce. Bella’s father and sister come to visit, Constance is introduced to a potential new beau, and Alice faces heartbreak as her ex-flame moves on to another woman.
Though Bella and Cecil are technically separated, their romantic affairs are still extramarital, as they have not yet finalized a divorce. Bella wakes up in bed with her boyfriend Marco; he is shirtless, while she is fully clothed. Similarly, Cecil lies shirtless in bed with his hopeful future fiancé, Nelly. Nelly worries that her parents will think of her as a “whore”; Cecil says that she is, in fact, a whore, though he attempts to use it as a term of endearment. Later, Cecil pushes her onto her bed and kisses her before the scene cuts away. Alice says she would rather “run naked down the Via Roma” than wear pants, as her mother, Bella, has started to do. A maid named Paola passionately kisses her boyfriend, embarrassing Constance. Salvatore, engaged to hotel cook Betty, smacks his fiancé on the bottom as he passes her in the kitchen.
Bella’s sister makes a reference to champagne. Cecil and Danioni each smoke cigarettes. Danioni also offers Cecil a cigar; he refuses, saying he wouldn’t take it if it was “rolled on the thighs of the Virgin Mary.”
“A–” is used once, though it is spoken in Italian and translated into English subtitles. Cecil uses the Lord’s name in vain in the form of “God’s sake.”
Lauren Cook is serving as a 2021 summer intern for the Parenting and Youth department at Focus on the Family. She is studying film and screenwriting at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. You can get her talking for hours about anything from Star Wars to her family to how Inception was the best movie of the 2010s. But more than anything, she’s passionate about showing how every form of art in some way reflects the Gospel. Coffee is a close second.
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