Walter Presents' Producer on What Makes 'Hotel Portofino' Different

When PBS Passport launched in 2019, it only had two shows: Rick Steves' Europe and The Great British Baking Show. However, it wasn't long before a brand new anthology series brought new content to PBS members: Walter's Choice, which in 2023 rechristened itself back to its original U.K. name, Walter Presents. Like WGBH's homegrown Masterpiece, which has been importing the best of British programming to American viewers since 1970, Walter Presents brings the best of foreign language programming to the U.K. on Channel 4 and now to Americans via PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. 

However, like any successful program, Walter Presents has grown, spawning a second production company, EagleEye Drama Ltd. EagleEye started as a company that remade these foreign dramas in English and reset them in the U.K. for Channel 4 viewers. Almost all of them have now found their way to the U.S. via PBS or streaming services like BritBox. Their success convinced the producers to branch out and make their own original series, the first of which, Hotel Portofino, is now in its third season and a massive sleeper hit on PBS.

Co-producer Jo McGrath, who is part of the brain trust behind both companies, sat down with us as Hotel Portofino's third season heated up to explain how what was initially a project to bring the shows they loved to their home country turned into such a massive machine. "My background is in production, as is Walter's [Iuzzolino, who's the curator of Walter Presents], and Jason [Thorpe, the company's third partner]. So, we always felt that we'd love to make drama at some point, but we were learning about the drama market right from the ground up." 

The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Telly Visions: Tell me how you guys got started.

Jo McGrath: We had this dream of putting together a service that would showcase the great shows that were going on around the world, and nobody got to see. At the time, the perceived wisdom was only Scandi shows work or, in rare exceptions, French shows. The BBC had great success with The Killing, but other than that and The Bridge, no others were showcased. Walter, Jason, and I got together; we watched different series and swapped notes on these fantastic shows we'd come across. We could not believe no one would watch them, so it was born from a real passion for these great shows. 

Walter Presents brought us into contact with creatives who are doing wonderful things on a fraction of the budget of other shows. However, we started getting calls from very high-up—I won't name and shame—very high-up broadcast executives and people running movie companies asking for our Walter Presents slate. They wanted to know what shows we were buying because the shows became hits they saw as ripe for adaptation. It had happened a couple of times; other companies took Walter Presents shows to adapt them. One of those was The Outlaws (Clan), which eventually became Apple TV+'s Bad Sisters. We just looked at each other and thought: "Now is the time; we should be doing this."  

We started with Professor T; it was a great show to begin with because we had a strong sense of how we would adapt it. We wanted to set it in an internationally renowned university town; we set it in Cambridge, and Ben Miller is the perfect Professor T. But it had been made in other territories as a Flemish and a German show; from an economic perspective, international sales wouldn't be top of the list because somebody else already did it. But we knew we could do a great version with huge potential. Luckily, that was the case, and other shows followed. Then, as we grew, we had the confidence to do original shows, too.

JM: One of the lovely things we found about international drama is that it doesn't get pigeonholed in the same way English shows do and that there are pluses and minuses. The plus means you can do fresh and surprising shows; they look different. Bad Sisters is an excellent example because it's a pretty hard show to market; it starts quite a flippant, funny show, but it does get darker. That's something that you don't find so much with English and American formats.

TV: Hotel Portofino was your first original show that isn't based on anything streaming on Walter Presents. Did you pull bits from this show or that show? The closest thing I can think of is Seaside Hotel. Or is it truly an original?

JM: Seaside Hotel has a history, and its Scandi-Danish history is very pertinent to it. But Walter is Italian, I love Italy, and the writer [Matt Baker] loves it too, so we wanted to set something in Italy. We'd been playing around with different ideas; it came from a brainstorm of various ideas that we could do; that's how Hotel Portofino grew.

TV: This season feels more like your traditional interwar pre-World War II. It reminded me of Babylon Berlin, another show that doesn't fit any single genre.

JM: It's an excellent example because it is a family saga. With Hotel Portofino, different seasons have different flavors. The first one was a hotel drama. The second one had a much more heist-like plot with a climax in a casino. Season 3 feels very different from the previous seasons, but it has all the ingredients that we love. It's escapist, it's luscious. It has song and dance numbers, glorious costumes, a fantastic view, brilliant settings, and all you can love. But from the very first scene, it has a different flavor. This sense of slight foreboding comes in with the fascist march and the square. The music builds, and you feel tension and that something terrible will happen. 

TV: So Hotel Portofino goes to PBS. Patience, the Astrid remake you guys are doing, is also set to air on public television. But you now have several shows that haven't been PBS shows — I'm thinking specifically of The Couple Next Door on Starz or the Face to Face remake, The Suspect, which is on BritBox.

JM: When pitching ideas, you're conversing with broadcasters about what they're looking for, and you get a sense of what the audiences would like. Start, for instance, with The Couple Next Door. Obviously, star Sam Heughan is a major star for Starz in Outlander, so it didn't feel too much to believe they might be interested in another show Sam was in. When you're putting things together, it's about finding the best bits in all areas, from casting to the crew behind it, because sometimes it's the personal connections. People want to work with people they trust, and some work better with others.

TV: Why did The Suspect go to BritBox?

JM: BritBox really wanted it, and obviously, Channel 4 is our partner on that one, too. It's also an unusual format, quite a unique one, a series of two-handers. It's a bit like live theatre; it's as near as one can get to do as like theater, but on TV, and having it in one location makes it very intense. 

TV: Honestly, I feel like we need to normalize 30-minute dramas like The Suspect here in the United States.

JM: I think it lends itself to streaming; you can do it in bite sizes. I love my viewing experience when the length changes; I like the unexpected. I'm all for playing with form and genre. Most linear broadcasters [like PBS] don't get the chance to do that, and they have a schedule to worry about. But streaming offers a wealth of possibilities.

TV: Patience is your next big one. It is based on Astrid, which became a massive hit via PBS Passport. What should viewers look forward to there?

JM: Oh, I'm really excited about Patience. There is a wonderful actor, Ella Maisy Purvis, who's neurodivergent, in the lead role and she gives a phenomenal performance. She's exceptional, really great, and will provide a different perspective on neurodivergence; we've got lots of the other neurodivergent actors as part of the format, too, so that's great. Laura Fraser co-stars with her (you'll know her from Breaking Bad). I have to say I'm looking at the pictures as a viewer and thinking, "Why isn't every series set in York?" It is such a wonderful backdrop. There isn't another series out there like this at the moment, but I think there is more potential for York-set shows.

TV: What other shows are you looking at that would make sense to do? Do you have any plans you can discuss which shows you're considering or more originals? 

JM: We are currently writing another crime procedural set in Italy. We can't announce that yet, but we look forward to it. 

Then there's the Mark Gatiss series we are doing with UK TV, Bookish. It's a wonderful detective series; Mark has always wanted to play a detective, and he co-wrote Sherlock. There isn't anything that Mark doesn't know about the crime detective genre, and it's just wonderful. It's set in the 1940s after the war when London was a dangerous place; many soldiers returned with guns. We have another few weeks of shooting, and then we'll be in the edit room. But an all-star cast, great naughty crimes, which run across two episodes, so there are three crimes, six one-hour episodes in total. So that's going to be a real treat. 

TV: Do you have an American distributor for that yet? Will Americans be able to watch it soon?

JM: It hasn't been announced yet, but we are working on it. I will let you know.

Hotel Portofino Season 3 continues with new episodes every Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on most PBS stations and streams on the PBS app and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. (As always, check your local listings.) Patience does not yet have a release date on PBS but is currently expected to debut in 2025. 

The Couple Next Door will air and stream on Starz sometime in the 2024-2025 television season; The Suspect Season 2 is heading to BritBox also as part of the 2024-2025 slate. As for Bookish, we await an official announcement of where it will air and stream as soon as the deal is complete.