Grand Hotel

When Brits stay in the Italian Riviera on the PBS period drama Hotel Portofino, there's drama in every room

- ILEANE RUDOLPH

Hotel Portofino

SERIES PREMIERE

Sunday, June 19, 8/7c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)

LOCKED DOWN IN cold and dreary London for the pandemic, writer Matt Baker (Professor T) says he was inspired to lift people's spirits and create "an escapist TV drama in a sunny and glamorous place." The result: Hotel Portofino, set in 1926 on the Italian Riviera, a location with stunning vistas of flowering cliffs overlooking crystal-clear water. (Though many exteriors were shot in Italy, the bulk of the six episodes was filmed in Opatija, a Croatian resort town.)

The series revolves around the newly opened luxurious hostelry of the title, run by expat Bella Ainsworth (Natascha McElhone). The wife and mother "wants to escape the imposition of her assigned role in a middle-class British hou hold," says the Halo actress. "She embraces the risk of creating a new, uncertain life in Italy."