‘Portobello’ Review: Anatomy of an Italian Scandal (HBO Max)

Over the course of a career spanning more than six decades—his first feature, Fists in the Pocket, dates back to 1965—filmmaker Marco Bellocchio has found a singular way of portraying contemporary Italy without resorting to the most familiar devices of social realism. There is a precise balance in his work where reality and absurdity blend into something unmistakably his own, while also reflecting the wide spectrum—ranging from the raw and violent to the incomprehensible and downright ridiculous—that defines life in the country. Bellocchio never veers fully into satire, parody, or outright comedy. In his films, everything is intertwined. It’s a natural, fluid coexistence that doesn’t call attention to itself—at least until the veils are lifted.

Portobello is the new series directed by the prolific 86-year-old filmmaker following the acclaimed Esterno Notte (2022), which focused on the Aldo Moro case—a subject Bellocchio had already explored from a different angle in the extraordinary Buongiorno, Notte (2003). The new miniseries begins in the same historical period, in the late 1970s, but most of its drama unfolds in the 1980s, a decade marked in Italy by major investigations and convictions of leaders from various mafia organizations, fueled by the testimonies of numerous pentiti—former members turned informants.

When Bellocchio begins telling the story of Enzo Tortora (played by Fabrizio Gifuni, who portrayed Aldo Moro in Esterno Notte), his world seems far removed from all that. Tortora is a television host riding the success of a hugely popular Friday-night variety show on RAI, watched by millions. Titled Portobello—named after a parrot viewers were encouraged to make repeat its name—the program is emblematic of old-school television: a lively mix of musicians, performers, and eccentric characters, set within a kind of marketplace where inventors pitched their products to the audience or money was raised for various causes. The series doesn’t linger on the show itself; its circus-like structure functions mainly as a metaphor for the chaotic supermarket Tortora’s life will soon become once the Neapolitan Camorra enters the picture.

Running parallel to Tortora’s story, Bellocchio depicts prison life among several members of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO) at a moment when the group, led by Raffaele Cutolo, is beginning to fracture. By the early ’80s, one of Cutolo’s lieutenants—an obsessive, unsettling figure named Giovanni Pandico (Lino Musella)—develops a fixation on Tortora. Offended that the host never acknowledged a set of lace doilies he had sent to the show, Pandico decides to include Tortora in his sweeping denunciation of hundreds of NCO members. He claims that the shipment—and what followed—was actually cocaine, and that Tortora himself was a high-ranking member of the organization. In the frenzy to dismantle these criminal networks, Tortora is arrested, imprisoned, and subjected to an investigation.

In a way that feels inconceivable yet disturbingly plausible within its context, the series shows how the case gradually entangles and transforms Tortora’s life. Overnight, the host of Italy’s most-watched TV program—drawing some 28 million viewers a week—is taken into custody, sent to prison, and placed at the center of an investigation that makes little sense and follows no clear logic, but keeps expanding thanks to his fame, the historical moment, and the peculiarities and eccentricities of his accusers. What begins with Pandico snowballs, propelled by media attention, to include a growing list of individuals who claim equally dubious criminal encounters with Tortora, supposedly proving his mafia ties. “This is theater of the absurd,” Tortora says when he is told what he’s being accused of. He has no idea what lies ahead.

Portobello never questions Tortora’s innocence. Aside from a few personal details, he is portrayed as a tireless man of impeccable ethics. The series doesn’t dwell too deeply on the subject—perhaps because RAI is one of its producers—but it becomes clear that the network abandons him amid a brutal, accusatory media climate that assumes his guilt without real evidence. That media paranoia is one of the most striking links between events that took place four decades ago and the present day, turning the series into a sharp critique of media and social-network lynchings, while also offering an unflattering portrait of the justice system and its political entanglements.

Across its six episodes, the singularity of the case takes on increasingly bizarre proportions as new “witnesses” emerge, each claiming to have known Tortora under similarly criminal circumstances. The final two episodes are the most powerful, focusing—as Bellocchio did in his recent film The Traitor—on the trial itself: one of those loud, chaotic public spectacles in which justice is supposedly administered in Italy. Absurd, darkly funny, infuriating, and painful all at once, it’s a show that almost demands to be seen to be believed—devastating for those involved, yet perversely fascinating for spectators due to its grotesque, circus-like mechanics.

Gradually, Bellocchio introduces a handful of dreamlike and metaphorical elements—not many, but enough to invite viewers to observe a criminal case that grows stranger with each passing accusation and each new character. Other touches—the careful, detailed portrayal of seemingly minor figures like a prosecutor or a small-time informant, or the recurring image of rats scurrying through the corridors of various institutions—add texture and force to a series that moves without haste yet without pause through the most extravagant corners of Italian politics, organized crime, and, above all, the justice system.

While the emotional core is Tortora’s personal ordeal (a note of advice: avoid Wikipedia if you want to preserve the suspense about how it all ends), Portobello ultimately feels like a master class from a filmmaker who, like Clint Eastwood, knows how to tell a story without rushing or relying on shortcuts—lingering on details while remaining gripping in its intrigue and real-world implications. Bellocchio’s storytelling may not be strictly classical—his dramatic construction follows a more personal, idiosyncratic logic—but in his own way, he goes straight to the point. And Tortora’s disbelief, his inability to understand how he became ensnared in such a case and lost nearly everything along the way, will be mirrored by viewers watching this theater of the absurd unfold as lived reality.