Best movie of this year hands down!

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Aurelio Zen is a fictional Italian detective created by the British crime writer Michael Dibdin and the BBC co-production was a brave attempt to adapt the stories with European co-producers.Filmed in Italy with a mainly British cast, Rufus Sewell throws away his recent run of playing Hollywood villains to become sharp suited Zen, a committed and tenacious detective. Also because he is Venetian working in Rome he also has to deal with a lot of politics as his more inferior fellow detectives get by with minimum effort as they enjoy patronage that he does not have.Sewell really took the role by the scruff of a Valentino shirt collar. With location filming in Rome, high fashion, ace detective work and having Caterina Murino as your love interest he certainly knew he was into a good thing.The mysteries were engaging enough and like the BBC adaptation of Wallander, you soon got used to the mixture of accents. Unfortunately the series was not renewed, the viewing figures were good but not just high enough to warrant renewal. It might had been a marginal decision as more Zen adaptations would had been nice to have.

Let me first talk about Inspector Morse, which has no important women to speak of. There might be some female victims, but there are no women on the police force, no female doctors, no women in any position of importance whatsoever. I mention this because, Inspector Morse was produced more than 20 years ago, so one can 'somehow' understand how they would have missed the boat. Then came Inspector Lewis, in which they remedied the situation and one sees many normal women in many different positions of authority. Unfortunately, in ZEN, we go back to the stone age again. There are no women of importance. It's a man's world only. If there are women, they are either sex objects (i.e. their only value is their sex appeal), or they throw themselves at ZEN begging for sex, or they have gone mad. For a modern series, ZEN is not a healthy portrayal of real life where there should be normal women in many different situations and responsibility. I was not impressed at all.

Welcome to the Italian Tourist Board production of some detective story or other. In the series you will see shimmering silhouettes of Rome, hear the chirp of cicadas in the midday sun and marvel at rolling scenes of pine forests and classical architecture - but as for everything else?I seem to be in a small minority (so far) of those who found this TV series profoundly disappointing. Perhaps it was because I read the books when they first came out and therefore have a clear picture in my mind of the Zen I was expecting. But no, clearly the original plots and characters were not good enough for the producers.Surely someone could have found either real Italians or at least people capable of putting on a good Italian accent? As it was, we needed to see the 'Questura di Roma' sign every 5 minutes just to remind viewers that we had not space-shifted into some English regional police station where people apparently have nothing useful to do.Zen - well he must be Italian, mustn't he, with his designer sunglasses and snazzy suits? And Tania, like all good Italian police workers, dressed to the nine in high heels. And everyone, but everyone, appears to live in some palatial dwelling. Where is the real Rome, the noisy, bustling, chaotic city which never sleeps, where crossing every road is to take your life in its hands? Italian arguments are wonderful and terrifying experiences (as well as being everyday) - here they turn into bizarre parodies which never quite get anyone's blood boiling. Shouting is not arguing!My main criticism, however, is connected with the characters and with their dialogue. There was not a single person in the series with whom one could identify or empathise. Characters and dialogues were all two-dimensional and flat. How could anyone possibly believe in the dynamics of the police station, of the relationship between Zen and his mother, between Zen and Fabbri, his bosses and even the bad guys? Everyone looked as though they were reading their lines for the first time off an autocue. Frankly, I could not get engrossed in a single episode, whereas the books were gripping.So in summary if you have not read any of the books and would like a two-dimensional and unconvincing romp through lovely Italian scenery, fine, but otherwise find something more gripping and convincing. Wallander it certainly isn't, in any of his incarnations.

I'm Italian, so I was curious to see the show because it claimed to portray "real" Italy, not the oh-it's-so-lovely-in-Tuscany crap. Pretty accurate. I won't go into the detective plots, which are average at best and full of implausibilities (also, the reality of Italy in 2010, with Berlusconi in charge and all that it implies, surpasses any fiction... :-/ ); I won't complain if a guy throws himself from a balcony of a prostitute in full daylight and it doesn't make the news or cause a new investigation: the show thrives on visuals, on quirky dialogue and on its actors. And Rome itself looks like the most beautiful place in the known universe - which it basically is. Some scenes are so lovingly shot in golden light that you nearly feel the heat in those narrow alleys, in the eternal Italian early Summer that Zen probably inhabits.Rufus Sewell is absolutely Italian, totally rocking the suit-and-sunglasses look (if you think he looks pretentious walking around like that, try walking through central Rome any day; guys like that are a dime a dozen here). He also nails the body language - in CABAL, the face he makes when Arianna tells him she is "a lady of the night" is really "in a different language" compared to how British actors would ever react, and the scenes with his Mom (who by the way is a French actress but nobody apparently noticed the different accent) perfectly express the way Italians feel forever 12 when under the scrutiny of their Mamma. I didn't mind that each character spoke in their own accent, it doesn't distract much; however Caterina Murino is really unintelligible, heck, I have much less of an accent and I'm not even in showbiz. However she just needs to be there, look beautiful and wear improbable garish blouses (THOSE are really fictional, no Italian woman in an official environment like a police department would wear them; definitely some male fantasy of what a desirable Mediterranean woman must look like). She doesn't seem to have much personality yet, we'll see if it gets better later. I wonder what is the point of Francesco Quinn's character, but I also guess they're just introducing him for the next stories. Zen (yes it's a real Venetian name, it sounds more like Tzenn) is no hero and is actually often rather "sfigato", which is a refreshing change from all those heroic American cops or the tortured musings of a Wallander. It will be really funny when this show - a co-production - gets dubbed into Italian and shown on our TV. People will find all kinds of faults with it. But you see? I'm being really Italian! I already see the worst-case scenario! People like me are the kind of world Zen lives in, and he's perfect in it.