What is the story of Hotel Portofino?

Q: What is the plot of Hotel Portofino?

About the Show Hotel Portofino tells the story of the Ainsworth family that has relocated from Britain to open an upscale hotel on the Italian coastline. As elite guests like the imperious Lady Latchmere check into the hotel, matriarch Bella Ainsworth tries to keep up with their constant demands.

Q: What is Constance secret in Hotel Portofino?

So Alice reveals Constances secret: she had a child out of wedlock when she was a teen, and the child is back in England while Constance works in Italy. But Bella doesnt care. She is sad to have raised a daughter so spiteful and un-sisterly.”

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Hotel Portofino release date
Who stars in Hotel Portofino?
What’s the plot of Hotel Portofino?
Is there a trailer for Hotel Portofino?
Related stories
What is the plot of Hotel Portofino?
What is Constance secret in Hotel Portofino?
What is Bella's secret on Hotel Portofino?
Is the Hotel Portofino a real place?

Natascha McElhone plays Bella Ainsworth in Hotel Portofino. (Image credit: ITV)

Hotel Portofino is a family drama set in the 1920s on the Italian Riviera. It revolves around the daughter of a wealthy industrialist who heads to Italy to set up a quintessentially British Hotel in the stunning town of Portofino.

Boasting a great cast and fabulous locations, Hotel Portofino is billed as a “family drama full of emotional highs and lows, with a classic ‘whodunit’ mystery woven throughout and building to a dramatic climax”.

Hotel Portofino will be shown PBS Masterpiece in the US and it will screen on ITV and BritBox in the UK. Filming took place in Portofino in Italy and along the Croatian coast.

Here’s everything we know about the series…

Hotel Portofino release date

Hotel Portofino launches exclusively on BritBox UK on Thursday, January 27, 2022. It airs next in the US on PBS Masterpiece, the series premiere is Sunday, June 19, 8 pm ET. It airs on the free-to-air channel, ITV, in the UK in 2023.

Who stars in Hotel Portofino?

Natascha McElhone (Solaris, Halo the series) takes the lead as Bella Ainsworth, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist who swaps dreary 1920s Britain for setting up a hotel in glamorous Italy. Mark Umbers (Home Fires) plays her dangerously dashing aristocratic husband Cecil. Four Wedding and a Funeral actor Anna Chancellor plays the hotel’s most famous but most troublesome guest, Lady Latchmere.

Other key cast members include Italian star Daniele Pecci (Orgoglio) as charismatic Count Carlo Albani, Lorenzo Richelmy (Marco Polo) who plays his son, Roberto and rising star Rocco Fasano plays anti-fascist activist Gianluca Vitali.

What’s the plot of Hotel Portofino?

Hotel Portofino doesn’t feel a million miles away from the hit series The Durrells. Just as in The Durrells, a woman swaps nineteenth-century England for adventure in a glamorous location and it also touches on the same themes of Brits struggling to make their way in a foreign country.

But Hotel Portofino has hidden depths — it features a murder mystery. The show’s makers tease that as well as having a comedy side it will also “reveal darker more serious storylines, set against the historical backdrop of the rise of Fascism in Mussolini’s Italy”.

Is there a trailer for Hotel Portofino?

Yes, there's a trailer for Hotel Portofino. It has echoes of The Durrells and Downton Abbey with the mystery element of The Madame Blanc Mysteries. It also looks stunning...

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David is the What To Watch Editor and has over 20 years of experience in television journalism. He is currently writing about the latest television and film news for What To Watch.

Before working for What To Watch, David spent many years on TV Times magazine, interviewing some of television's most famous stars including Hollywood actor Kiefer Sutherland, singer Lionel Richie and wildlife legend Sir David Attenborough.

David started out as a writer on TV Times before becoming the title's deputy features editor and then features editor. During his time on TV Times, David also helped run the annual TV Times Awards. David is a huge Death in Paradise fan, although he's still failed to solve a case before the show's detective! He also loves James Bond and controversially thinks that Timothy Dalton was an excellent 007.

Other than watching and writing about telly, David loves playing cricket, going to the cinema, trying to improve his tennis and chasing about after his kids!

What is the plot of Hotel Portofino?

About the Show "Hotel Portofino" tells the story of the Ainsworth family that has relocated from Britain to open an upscale hotel on the Italian coastline. As elite guests like the imperious Lady Latchmere check into the hotel, matriarch Bella Ainsworth tries to keep up with their constant demands.

What is Constance secret in Hotel Portofino?

So Alice reveals Constance's secret: she had a child out of wedlock when she was a teen, and the child is back in England while Constance works in Italy. But Bella doesn't care. She is sad to have raised a daughter so spiteful and “un-sisterly.”

What is Bella's secret on Hotel Portofino?

Hotel Portofino opens this week with a surprising reveal. Hotel proprietress Bella and her husband Cecil have engaged in some marital activity the night before.

Is the Hotel Portofino a real place?

The show features an array of charming towns and historic resorts in Northern Italy's Liguria region, but the real star is the once-quaint fishing village turned resort town of Portofino.