Camilleri is equally at home with the television series’s eastward shift of his novels’ locations, calling the settings of the screen Montalbano “extraordinary”.
Camilleri himself has admitted as much, but as someone who, for 30 years, worked for RAI, the Italian state broadcaster that produced the series, he has a media professional’s understanding of character upgrade: “My Montalbano,” he has said, “is less robust, less quick to action, less young but the way he reasons things out is identical.”.
The television Montalbano, as portrayed by muscular Roman actor Luca Zingaretti, is, as any reader of the book will recognise, a close but not perfect fit for the older police inspector of the books.
