Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy

This new series is more great form from a man who is quickly becoming the king of the travelogue, a genre which is otherwise overstuffed with copycat shows being churned out week after week on UK screens. Searching for Italy, however, feels like it has been done with care and class, and with Tucci at the helm, it’s great entertainment too.

Tucci is charm personified and watching him gush over a handful of San Marzano tomatoes is so relaxing, it’s borderline meditative.

Tucci is eminently watchable, especially when he eats—he tucks into everything, such as a gorgeous zucchini pasta, with enviable fervor, and often communicates how delicious he finds the food through mischievous smiles. Though the context of the pandemic makes the show a bit of a roller coaster in terms of feeling lulled into comfort by Tucci’s inherent charm and then having elbow bumps reawaken us to the ongoing crisis, Searching for Italy still manages to serve up some pretty generous portions of escapism.

Verbosity isn’t his forte (“Mmm, it’s very good” is his standard response to culinary excellence) so much as exquisite presentation and an understanding that he’s in on the joke.

Without being able to travel to Italy anytime soon, it’s a sincere pleasure to spend some time there vicariously through a host as game and genial as Tucci. Should he ever decide to expand his tour of the country and actually unravel its thorny new reality instead of glossing over it, it would probably make for even more fascinating, revealing television.

Tucci is an utterly inoffensive guide throughout this sweet, light delizia of a documentary, but there is one moment with Coccia that nicely illustrates his one weakness – which is that he is slightly too muted, too self-effacing.

It’s polished to within an inch of blandness, great for the tourist board, less so for the tourist.