'Hotel Portofino' Season 3 to Return for Soapy Summer Fun

After seeing if the autumn weekends would be better for visitors with Season 2, Hotel Portofino is returning to where it belongs for Season 3, the height of summer. The Eagle Eye Drama original (one of the few they produce that isn't an English-language remake of a popular foreign-language series from sister company Walter Presents) has quietly grown into a PBS fan favorite despite not getting nearly the same amount of marketing as shows that air under the Masterpiece banner. The combination of over-the-top soap opera, gorgeous Italian vistas, and period clothing has produced a perfect escapist fantasy, and viewers are unwilling to say "Ciao."

Like most period dramas, Hotel Portofino advances one year per season, with each season beginning the next summer in Italy as the Ainsworth family throws open the doors to the upscale hotel matriarch Bella is working to establish on the edge of the titular Italian coastal city. Set during the interwar period, Season 1 began in 1926, four years after Benito Mussolini took office and his fascist thugs had gained a stranglehold on the country. Season 2 advanced to 1927, and Season 3 will begin in 1928. However, with this fact, there needs to be a bit of historical background, especially for Americans, who are taught the "roaring Twenties" ended with the Great Depression in October 1929 and the Great Stock Market crash.

While 1929 sealed the end of a decade of excesses and helped create the conditions for World War II, the downturn began a full year earlier in Europe. America had been funding the post-war boom across the pond since the end of the war, but as conditions started to deteriorate, those investments began to pull back, tariffs rose, and Europe began to lose money in a massive hurry. The Global Depression hit Germany first but quickly spread, especially among the elites of the U.K., precisely those Bella's posh hotel aims to bring in.