Bolzano is an Italian city located about 50km south of the Austrian border. It’s known as the gateway to the Dolomites. Despite being a beautiful place in the South Tyrol region, it has had a troubled history, including being the location of a notorious Nazi concentration camp in the Second World War. Even today, although it’s located in firmly inside the Italian border, around 25% of the population speak German as their first language.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
This cultural difference is the foundation stone of Walter Presents latest offering from Italy, ‘Pale Mountains' (known as ‘Brennero' in its original Italian language).
Eva Kofler (Elena Radonicich) is a young and ambitious prosecutor in Bolzano, and also happens to be the daughter of Gerhard, one of the finest prosecutors the city has known. Gerhard is retired now and battling with early stage of dementia, but there is one black mark against his impressive legacy – a serial killer known as The Monster.
The Monster is a murderer who taunted the authorities more than three years previously in the region. He targeted German-speaking men only and evaded capture, before going quiet. But now it seems like he’s back – and Eva has surprisingly been appointed as the person responsible for finally capturing the man who tormented the city. In this case, a man is found shot dead in an alleyway, and a characteristic brooch left on the body – a Monster trademark. Ballistics confirmed that the distinctive bullets used matched those deployed by The Monster, too.
Eva – a German-speaker herself – seeks help from Police Inspector Paolo Costa (Matteo Martari), who was the lead detective when The Monster struck previously. But Paolo has his own demons stemming from an incident that occurred when he and his girlfriend were pursuing the killer in his car. They came off the road in a mountainous area, their vehicle spinning and tossing down the mountainside. His girlfriend was killed, and Paolo lost a leg in the accident.
The contrast in Eva’s and Paolo’s personalities causes somewhat inevitable friction initially. Both characters are stereotypically portrayed according to the language they speak – Eva is the cool, efficient German-speaker; Paolo is the hot-headed, passionate Italian. But again rather predictably, their relationship grows closer and closer as the case develops.
This isn’t a bad show at all, but it must be said that like most Italian dramas, it’s largely a case of style over substance. Both main characters definitely tick the eye-candy box, as does the gorgeous Italian scenery. But the writing is a times cliched and predictable.
But having said that, the show does have a certain Italian charm – and sometimes style is all you need, regardless of any lacking in substance.
Walter Presents: ‘Pale Mountains' is available as a full boxset on C4 Streaming now.
 is a young and ambitious prosecutor in Bolzano, and also happens to be the daughter of Gerhard, one of the finest prosecutors the city has known.){kind=link}