Don Matteo 13, Raoul Bova has arrived. And now?

Getting rid of the main character of a series that has been on the air for twenty years is a risk that few would have taken and, even for this alone, Rai and Lux ​​Vide would deserve a standing ovation for their courage. However, understand how Don Matteo will survive without Terence Hill is very difficult to imagine, since removing the protagonist who gives the title to a fiction would be a bit like opening a jar of Nutella and finding jelly inside. To make up for the absence of Don Matteo, taken away in the middle of the night by some shady characters who hastened to get him into the car without even allowing him to greet Natalina, Cecchini, Captain Olivieri and company, everything has been focused on beauty. The Don Massimo of Raoul Bova in fact, he presents himself as a shadowy shepherd who hides more than one secret and who, needless to say, is immediately on the zebedee halfway through Spoleto because the rectory has always been Don Matteo’s habitat, and not to see him officiate mass – even if in its place there is a fustacchione – it cannot help but perplex.

In the fifth episode of Don Matteo – what we have known for some time would have seen Terence Hill out of the game – Don Massimo introduces himself to the public dragging with him an aura of mystery that is part of his charm. Although Cecchini thinks that he is a set, something more of his life and his vocation than him we discover with the passing of the minutes, when he comes out that, before receiving the vocation, Massimo was a carabiniere who decided to revolutionize his life by feeling responsible for the death of a child in the middle of a shooting that he followed in the past. “It was my fault, that child died because of me”, says Massimo, explaining that, from that moment on, he felt the urge to do something for others while not giving up his investigative vein which, apparently, it is a secret passion for all the parish priests of Sant’Eufemia.

During the episode, however, we also discover that Don Massimo knows Don Matteo well thanks to his mother, a long-time friend of the priest, and also that the character played by Hill packed up in the middle of the night not for a kidnapping, but to manage a very delicate diplomatic mission. Captain Oliveri played by Maria Chiara Giannetta at one point discovers, in fact, that Don Matteo got into a car of the Foreign Ministry which took him to Sudan because a missionary friend was kidnapped and they asked him to leave to mediate with the kidnappers. Beyond the international turning point – Don Matteo’s life is more eventful than Mata Hari’s – everything is resolved with a letter that Don Matteo sends to his cheerful gang – even if it is somewhat absurd that, with Natalina hospitalized, don’t take the first plane and rush to her – and the recommendation that Don Massimo take care of them. Being able to build the same trust that the public has placed in Hill all these years will not be easy but, at this point, it would really be advisable to understand in which direction to go. Because, once the curiosity effect has waned, it will certainly not be possible to keep “Don Matteo” in the opening credits only to have Don Massimo tick.

Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:

Raoul Bova: “Anything can happen”

Don Matteo: Terence Hill’s farewell is a disappointment (for now)

Don Matteo still works great (but what will happen after the fifth episode?)

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