A hugely successful programme was broadcast on Friday evenings on Italian TV in the Eighties, entitled “Portobello”. The host was a journalist of Genoese origins with an affected air about him, called Enzo Tortora, who brought the show inspired by the famous London market to 26 million viewers (roughly 47% of the entire population of Italy) on a weekly basis. As stressed by TV critic and historian Aldo Grasso, Portobello successfully “stole” the “classifieds” style of provincial newspapers, which were veritable “interaction machines”. One of the show’s most original brainwaves, according to Grasso, was the decision to focus on provincial audiences – an ideal pool of people keen to tell their stories – rather than pinning their hopes on picky city viewers. Ultimately, Tortora was the first big TV host who was able to capitalise on human stories from the peripheries and from excluded and “non-integrated” folk. And given the themes it covered, it was a forerunner for future hit shows like Agenzia matrimoniale and Chi l’ha visto?.

But on 17 June 1983, at the height of his popularity, Enzo Tortora was arrested on suspicion of being a drug dealer affiliated with the newly organised Camorra founded by mafia boss Raffaele Cutolo. A host of photographers, reporters and TV crews immortalised the journalist wearing handcuffs and being escorted by two police officers, but this only marked the beginning of the media fallout, which spanned an atrocious four-year court case. Marco Bellocchio has directed an HBO Max original series based on the affair, consisting of six 60-minute episodes which will be available to stream in 2026. Portobello [+lee también:
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ficha de la serie] was selected Out of Competition in the Venice International Film Festival, where previews of the first two episodes were screened to the press and the public.

Played by Fabrizio Gifuni (collaborating with Bellocchio for the fourth time and entering expertly into the “ambiguity” of another character), Enzo Tortora appears in the opening frame of the first episode, in the corner of his medium of choice: a television. Two prisoners, Domenico Barbaro (Alessio Praticò) and Giovanni Pandico (Lino Musella) - otherwise known as the scribbler, the man whom boss Cutolo (Gianfranco Gallo) uses to write his letters - are watching Portobello from a cell. Pandico has developed a veritable obsession for Tortora, who’s never replied to any of the letters he’s written for his cellmate. He’s the one who “frames” the journalist in court. Over the course of these two episodes, we meet Camorra informants, assistant district attorneys convinced that this public service journalist and showman would be capable of peddling hundreds of kilos of cocaine undetected, and journalists ready and willing to create “the monster”: a wave of public opinion inclined to side with or against Tortora (and social media didn’t even exist back then…). Ultimately, justice is put through the mill and emerges in tatters.

Bellocchio shoots the backstory and the beginning of this legal drama with his usual skill, at ease with the TV timings required by the format and focusing on specific details which viewers must piece together over the course of this clamorous and incredibly complicated affair, which is reconstructed with the greatest historical accuracy. The director’s interest in the malfunctioning of power which took place at that historical juncture – specifically, organised crime and the collusion of the political establishment – is clear. Bellocchio immediately implies that these machinations came about on account of statements made by Tortora, criticising the billions put forward for rebuilding efforts following the 1980 earthquake which ended up in the Camorra’s hands. And he raises questions over the power wielded by a judiciary which is inclined towards attack, namely the media and show business world who create idols in order to tear them down in the space of a single night.

Portobello was produced by Our Films and Kavac Films, in co-production with ARTE France and in co-operation with RAI Fiction and The Apartment.