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The improbable adventures of an improbable inspector of the Italian Police Force.

The Show

L’ispettore Coliandro is an Italian television series aired on Rai 2 since 2006, starring Giampaolo Morelli, directed by Marco Manetti and Antonio Manetti (collectively referred to as Manetti Bros.). The series is a black comedy crime thriller, based on the novels of crime writer Carlo Lucarelli. The series’ visual style and plot contain many quotes from popular crime and action movies of the 70s and 80s.

Coliandro is a young detective that works in Bologna. His peculiar ability of being, at the same time, brave, reckless and particularly non-observant puts him in many dangerous situations.

In most of the episodes Coliandro tries to investigate cases that his more skilled colleagues cannot solve and somehow he unintentionally gets involved in. This results in him being punished, taken off field work and assigned to “boring” desk jobs such as issuing passports. During his unauthorized investigations he is often helped by two of his colleagues, Trombetti and Gargiulo, whereas his superiors dismiss his efforts and consider him a joke and a nuisance.

Coliandro is ignorant, crude, and despised by all his colleagues except his partner Gargiulo, who is the only one seeing him the way he sees himself: a real-life version of Inspector Callahan. He often quotes from these and other American action and crime movies and tries to imitate the behavior of his idols.

In every case Coliandro is helped by a girl (a victim or a witness) and he always hopelessly falls in love with her but he is, inexorably, dumped at the end of every case. Coliandro seems to be able to close every case with a combination of stubbornness and luck but at the end is always punished due to his “unprofessional behavior”.

The humor of the series is manifest in the difference between the way Coliandro sees himself and the way the rest of the world sees him. Coliandro’s very name is a play on the Italian word coglione – a word literally meaning “balls”, but most usually used with the meaning of “asshole.” (Others who meet him for the first time also often mispronounce his name in various ways making it “coriander” (the spice) or even “confetti.” At any rate, he must continually correct its pronunciation.)

One notable characteristic of the “Coliandro” series is that all episodes are shot in the city of Bologna or its immediate surroundings, a wealthy town which is not really known for crime.

The Episode

The Moldovan housekeeper of Coliandro, Mrs. Olga, is worried about the disappearance of her nephew Alex, so the inspector offers to help her in the search. The young man, an illegal immigrant and a former wrestler, carries out an unknown but profitable job and has been unavailable for five days. Convinced by his own prejudice that behind the disappearance there is a matter of drugs, the inspector turns to his colleagues from Mobile, Gamberini and Bertaccini, from whom he learns that Alex died the previous evening, hit by a car while riding a bicycle. . For personal reasons, the colleague of the Scientific Paffoni was present near the scene of the accident, at first glance it seems unlikely that the fatal wounds on the victim’s body were caused by the car investor. Among other things, this is not the only death of the day: a former Olympic wrestling champion of Cypriot nationality, nicknamed Santa Claus because of the disguise he used to wear, died of an overdose in Piazza Maggiore after attacking policemen and passersby.

Coliandro therefore decides to go and question the investor, a certain Scortichini Daniele, by going to the recreational club he attends: with amazement, rather than a young person, as he imagined, he finds himself in front of an elderly person who is playing bowls with friends. When questioned, the elderly man seems to play a prepackaged part that the inspector does not believe in, in fact a playmate of Scortichini reveals to him in confidence how the elderly man has not driven his car for some time, which is instead usually used by his nephew Rocco. , a fool who used to hang out in an abandoned former stable outside the city. Coliandro then goes to the stable and, once inside, has a contact with a young dark-skinned girl who attacks him leaving him stunned on the ground. Awakening battered, the inspector beats in a sad retreat, but discovers that the girl has taken refuge in her car and, under the fire of his own weapon which the young woman has taken, is forced to take her to her house. Here, thanks to the experience of the housekeeper, who is a specialized nurse in her country, she discovers that the girl is in a drug withdrawal crisis and that she knows Alex, having recognized him in a photo that Olga had brought to the inspector to help him in the his research. Thanks to the Pakistani manager of the minimarket where she serves, to whom she asked the favor of looking after the girl in her absence, he also discovers that she is called Veena and comes from a remote country in Pakistan, where an ancient form of struggle is taught in the mud; she does not know where she is or how she got there and has been nicknamed Bully Kutta, after the fighting dog, presumably because of her fighting prowess.

Meanwhile, at the police station, Superintendent Buffarini’s clever intuition connects the death of Santa Claus with that of Alex: in the recent past, the two had made a steady couple in wrestling fights.

Returning home from a quick errand, Coliandro discovers that Veena has disappeared and in her place he finds a thug trying to strangle him: the intervention of Gargiulo, visiting the inspector to celebrate his promotion to chief inspector, is providential. it helps him to free himself from the aggressor’s grip and to neutralize him and then arrest him. Brought to the presence of Commissioner De Zan, the energetic man is reticent, but another intuition of Buffarini allows him to be identified as a famous Egyptian wrestler and wrestler. With the information he provided and that of Coliandro on the Pakistani girl, the initial suspicions of the Mobile inspectors are confirmed: in Bologna there is a round of clandestine fights, where the wrestlers are drugged with a mix of drugs that causes strong addiction, madness and finally death, run by the organized underworld. The former stables are then immediately searched, which however proves unsuccessful because the criminals have managed to make all evidence of their illegal activity disappear. The agents then go back to the police station, except Coliandro who is suspended from service by De Zan and lingers a few more moments alone at the stables, ending up being intercepted by the head of the criminal organization, an old acquaintance of his: the Casalese boss Scognamiglio. , accompanied by Veena, who beats him hard to get his dose of drugs in exchange. The criminal is thirsty for revenge against the inspector and plans to eliminate him by making him fight in the Yellow Scorpion tournament, which is about to begin. Coliandro is thus thrown into the ring against a violent fighter but, just as he is about to have the worst, he is pulled out by the boss himself who has an even worse end in store for him: he wants to see him massacred by Bully Kutta, so he locks them together in a cell, under Rocco’s armed control, waiting for them to fight in the ring. Veena, however, knocks out Rocco, allowing Coliandro to take possession of his gun and his phone, which he uses to ask for help from Gargiulo, who nevertheless seems not to understand the gravity of the situation because he is engaged in the celebrations for his promotion. During the escape, a firefight arises and Coliandro and Veena find themselves with no exit, face to face with Scognamiglio and two drug addicted fighter sisters, to whom the boss gives the order to beat the inspector and throw him out of the window. Coliandro, however, has a packet of drugs with him, which he promises to his sisters in exchange for beating the criminal, so the boss is attacked by the fighters while reinforcements alerted by Gargiulo arrive at the same time. The Mobile colleagues thus arrest the boss and defeat the gang, taking all the credit for the result of the operation together with Longhi, despite the vibrant grievances of the inspector, who, however, will have his revenge once he returns home.

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