Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy

Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy is an American travel and food show which premiered on February 14, 2021, on CNN. The series follows Academy Award-nominee Stanley Tucci, who travels around Italy uncovering lesser-known places and exploring their cultures, cuisine and history.^[1] The series received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series.^[2] It was renewed for a second season.^[3]

Episodes[]

Production[]

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Tucci acknowledged the influence of another CNN original series, Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. Tucci said: "The show that we are doing is distinctly different than his: I am not nearly as adventurous as Tony was, not nearly. Or as brave. But what he did is open the doors to all of us who were interested in food, and travel, to explore in our own ways. He was an extraordinary writer, a nice person, and a great explorer of the human condition through food."^[4]

Amy Entelis, CNN's executive vice present of talent and content development, said: "The Bourdain show was a big experiment at the time, but it quickly became clear that our audience was very interested in stories beyond breaking news, but that were interesting, substantive, thought-provoking stories about food and culture around the world". Entelis added, “There was never a question in our minds about whether we would return [to the genre], it was going to be, what is the right show, who is the right person, what is the right time in terms of launching something new. I think we feel really good right now about putting this show out in the world.”^[4]

Four of the episodes were filmed in the fall of 2019, while the episodes set in Naples and Bologna were filmed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.^[5]

Reception[]

Ratings[]

The show's premiere on February 14, 2021, had 1.52 million viewers, and its second episode, which aired on February 21, had 1.64 million viewers. The show's main viewing demographic consisted of adults between the ages of 25 and 54.^[3]

Critical reception[]

On Metacritic, the series has an aggregated score of 76 out of 100 based on 5 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[6]

John Anderson, writing for The Wall Street Journal, wrote that Stanley Tucci is "not a performer given to grand gestures. So when he tastes the yolk-fattened spaghetti carbonara in a Roman restaurant, closes both eyes and spontaneously hugs the chef, it is the equivalent of fireworks over the Tiber", adding that the series contains a number of such moments. He concluded: "It’s a marvelously well-written show, briskly paced, and makes the rest of the food-TV competition as appetizing as last night’s mozzarella sticks."^[7]

Helen Rosner of The New Yorker described the series as "a good show, but not quite a great one. Its culinary discoveries ... are not new, and its gloss on the less glamorous aspects of Italian culture and history are rarely more than decorative." She described Tucci in the series as "a figure out of time", and wrote: "Like Tucci, Anthony Bourdain was rich in charisma and possessed unlikely sex appeal. But Bourdain the travel-show host served as a spotlight, fondly illuminating the people and places around him. Tucci is an electromagnet. Even when he’s in a crowd, he seems like the only person on the screen", adding: "the show is at its best when it stops fighting the desire to focus entirely on him."^[8]

Sophie Gilbert, writing for The Atlantic, said that the series "presents itself as escapism, even as it half-acknowledges the reality of the pandemic", and wrote: "Some travelogues, such as the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, seek out underexplored destinations and culinary traditions. Searching for Italy takes its audience through the most obvious stops on the Italian itinerary (Rome! Milan! Tuscany!) while winking at the darker crevices of our imagination." She concluded her review by stating: "An episode filmed in Rome, though, predates 2020, and filled me with anxiety: Tucci dines indoors in a tiny pasta restaurant near the Pantheon, stuffed with visitors eating and drinking and expounding volubly in Italian. ... When will we be able to actually do this again? Will we even want to?"^[9]

Caroline Framke, writing for Variety, criticized the series for choosing to air an episode filmed during a brief period of respite from the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy as the first episode, stating: "Launching "Searching For Italy" with this episode is an extremely confusing choice, and not just because we now know that this apparent "moment of normality" didn't last", and adding: "treating an enormous event such as a pandemic like an inconvenient asterisk does a disservice to both the show and the country it covers. ... This bizarre initial decision is made even more frustrating by the fact that the series is otherwise very smart and endearing." However, she praised Tucci for exploring Rome's less well-known locations and meals in the second episode, including "a fascinating detour into the inventive ways Italian chefs have transformed offal, or all the organs and bits of gristly meat that poorer Italians learned to work into delicacies." She concluded: "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."^[5]

Awards and nominations[]

References[]

External links[]

• Official website
• Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy at IMDb
• Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy at Rotten Tomatoes