Furthering his effortless charisma and likeability, Stanley Tucci makes his lifestyle of Italian region hopping and delighting in their signature gastronomic feasts a real treat to behold.
Usually having to endure other people – and rich people, at that – having the time of their (and our) lives isn’t the most enjoyable experience, and whilst the areas that Tucci visits layers his new series, Tucci in Italy, with a serious case of food and travel envy for those viewing, we’re more than willing to go along for the ride because it’s near impossible to dislike Tucci and it helps that we learn vital information along the way.
There’s a real sense of familiarity to the way that Tucci interacts with the locals, despite him being very much a tourist across the series’ 5 episodes, which serves us as viewers, wanting to know just as much as the actor does. He also wisely never dips into the saccharine clichés of being overtly gushy about each food taste and reveal. Sure, there’s a lot of variations of “Oh man! That’s so good!” exclamations, but it comes from an absolute place of sincerity. There’s no performance here. Tucci is genuinely interested in not just what he’s eating, but the why and the how.
As he states at the beginning of the first episode, “I believe the best way to understand what makes a country and its people unique is through their food. And this is true nowhere more than Italy, where even the shape of your pasta and the sauce you serve it with speaks directly to identity.” Truly taking this on board, Tucci in Italy doesn’t entirely stray from the formula of his previous series, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, but it also knows not to just ape that style, so there’s a sense of freshness and ingenuity to the regions he visits (Tuscany, Lombardy, Trentino-Alto Adige, Abruzzo and Lazio), the chefs and home cooks he seeks out, and the detail, both historical and political, that he becomes privy to.
Oddly emotional at times, always amusing (Tucci’s dry sense of humour proves a consistent winner amongst his excitable remarks), and educational and entertaining in equal measure (did you know that the Egyptians invented pizza?), Tucci in Italy takes the formats of the tried and true travel and cooking shows and reheats them in a manner that makes us particularly salivate.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
All episodes of Tucci in Italy are now available to stream on Disney+ in Australia and on Hulu in the United States.
