Don Matteo

I am constantly amazed at the twists in this show & the very clever dialogue. A simple repeating plot, but the characters really draw you in. Nice, clean, humor & fun. You will grow to love each one.

I've enjoed watching this lovely Italian series throughout the years. However I sometimes do find it frustrating how the cast keeps changing over and over again and it seems like for some characters the writers only knew what to do with them for a season. After that the character is gone and never seen or mentioned again.

Then again it is refreshing to see new faces I guess, but some of the storylines kind of just don't get closure. Or by that I mean we as a viewer have no idea what happened, after suddenly in the next season they are gone and there's no explanation.

Well at least I guess we got something, when they showed what happened to Tommasi and Anceschi, so we got some sort of closure. Even though Tommasi seemed to be a fan favorite and I also think he should've stayed for a longer time. Seasons 6-10 I think were the golden era of Don Matteo.

Acting has been brilliant and especially during the later years it has brough tears into grown mans eyes. Keep up with the good work!

Fr. Matteo is fine family fare and always has a moral or two to make one think. I do enjoy all of the characters, but I would not recommend binge watching more than one season at a time. It is more enjoyable to come to it fresh.

One huge distraction -- or, rather, attraction, perhaps -- is watching Mr. Hill's hairline recede. It would not even have entered my mind, except in the first episode, the Bishop tells him that he is too good-looking and implies that if, among other things, he were bald, he would be less of a temptation to women.

Each episode, it becomes more and more obvious that his hair is "thinning"; and each episode, the makeup folks try other ways to conceal that fact. A fun pastime in itself! Plus, the camera folks zoom in and take off the top of heads, so that we see less and less of Fr. Matteo's less-and-less. Perhaps related to this issue, Mr. Hill's character has less of a role to play and the feuding officers become more prominent. That is a bit of a shock, and sad, because the show is supposed to be about Don Matteo.

This is a highly recommendable series about a priest who helps police to solve mysteries in the beautiful Italian village of Gubbio. The priest Don Matteo is played by Terence Hill in his usually light hearted, mocking way and his personality, with the excellent supporting actors, is what gives this series a special glint: Natalina his housekeeper (french actress Natalie Guetta) always grieving for no being married, Pippo the sacristan (Francesco Scali), Francesco Scali and Simone Montedoro as capt. Anceschi and his successor capt. Tomassi, always trying to avoid Don Matteo snoops in the police cases and especially maresciallo Cecchini (Nino Frassica), special friend of Don Matteo and who always pass him the information about cases to help him solves the mysteries. The relationship between Gubbio inhabitants is as important as the cases and provides the humour touch that makes the series so enjoyable. In the last season Gubbio has been changed to Spoleto, causing people's protest in Italy. Interesting mystery cases mixed with humor, charismatic characters and a beautiful town location. All this makes the perfect combination for a successful and non alcoholic cocktail: no sex nor violence but good vibrations and final ending morals makes this series a good entertainment for the whole family not to be missed. Undoubtedly, highly recommended.

I don't even know where to begin with this show.

It is addictive.

When I first started watching Don Matteo (consisting of almost 200 episodes in total since starting in 2000) on MHz Worldview International Mystery, it was on the advice of a good friend who'd stumbled across the channel and the international mysteries that air on it in the evenings. I didn't even know MHz existed down there in the Comcast 250's before that. "A detective priest!" my friend raved. "You'll love him!" At first watch, Don Matteo seemed crazy silly to me. About a bike-riding, cassock-wearing, priest (played by the endlessly energetic Terrence Hill -- of spaghetti western fame) who solves crimes because the local police force (the "Carabinieri") is (frankly) too incompetent to do it on their own.

There seemed to be about five basic plots for the shows that the writers of this series rehashed over and over AND OVER again, throwing in a slight variation here, changing a minor story line there (for example, there's the kayaking competition episode, the boxing competition episode, the bicycling competition episode... and then there's the episode where Natalina (one of Matteo's "side-kicks") gets a dog, another where she gets a baby. I could imagine the writers sitting around a table and looking at their blank pages and saying "let's do THIS again!" It all seemed... well... like I said, silly. And then, suddenly, I realized I was hooked. I love this show. I totally adore it. Yes. The characters are silly. The mysteries not very mysterious. The police are more like the Marx Brothers than SVU. BUT IT WORKS.

It is adorable and enjoyable and it makes me feel great to watch it on a good day, and it makes me feel better to watch it on a lousy day.

Much of the brilliance here falls directly on the capable shoulders of Nino Frassica, who plays Maresciallo Cecchini (one of the aforementioned Carabinieri). He's a physical comedy genius, and his interactions with his Captain (played by the equally enjoyable Simone Montedoro) are miracles of timing and humor. Some of my very favorite scenes in the series involve these two actors playing off each other with great skill and aplomb.

Terrence Hill is also magnificent in the starring role.

As I've written in another review, Italian mystery shows like this are a genre unto themselves. If there's a spectrum, and the Scandinavian mysteries like Wallander are on the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, Don Matteo is as far as you can get on the other side in the infrared. It is bright and funny and not at all subtle. This show is not so much about the mystery as it is about the characters, their relationships with each other and the world around them, and about morality, fairness and kindness, family and love.

And when the show hits pay dirt, like with the season 6 "Francesca e il lupo," it is extremely good.

Yes, as someone wrote, this show may be a vehicle for the Catholic Church (although Matteo does seem to be very open minded about many things the Church does not approve of). And it may be predicable and at times a little mind-numbing (there is a lot of comic relief in this show, but it is often played as a single note). However, Don Matteo is simply wonderful to watch.

Many thanks to MHz Worldview International Mystery for airing this series. As I write this review, I am anxiously anticipating the start of the seventh season of Don Matteo. Since being introduced to MHz I've had my eyes opened to these amazing shows made in Italy, France, Denmark, Sweden, and so on. MHz is a national treasure, and if you're not watching it, but like good mysteries, you should give it a try.