An Appreciation – The Many Lives Of Chesterton’s “Saintly” Creation: Don Matteo Et Alii

There are 13 seasons and 260 episodes of Don Matteo (with season 12 coming soon to MHz Choice), the wildly popular, international favorite show starring Terence Hill (b. 1930), whose breakout role in the 1973 Tonino Valerii spaghetti western, “My Name Is Nobody” set his career ablaze on both sides of the Atlantic even though his acting career began in 1951 with bit parts as a child actor in Italian films.

In order to appreciate Don Matteo, we must return to his origins as envisioned by G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), whose fictional Roman Catholic priest/amateur sleuth, “Father Brown” was loosely based on the real Right Rev. Msgr. John O’Connor. A rarity in the United Kingdom, whose state religion is Anglicanism, Father Brown’s Catholicism is a testament to Chesterton’s conversion. British mystery writers favor priests as amateur detectives, making it a popular sub-genre of detective fiction. Alec Guinness starred as the eponymous Father Brown in the 1954 film.

Let us toast these men and women of the cloth with a dram of mead!

Like his British progenitor, Don Matteo and his ecclesiastical brethren face daunting challenges, stringent Church dogma and humanity’s ever-evolving ideals of compassion and understanding. All the possible/impossible variations of the Ten Commandments are illustrated in the show. Terence Hill as Don Matteo, wearing hiking boots and a shapeless, black cassock, cannot hide his athletic physique, with a black beret tilted rakishly to the right, still showing his piercing blue eyes (sometimes hidden under aviator sunglasses) and his impossibly sensuous smile. He not only rides a bicycle but also a motorcycle and a horse. He can drive a car or a three-wheeler and shows off his skills at archery and skydiving. His handsome looks, inner warmth, compassion, sensitivity and genteel manners belie Terence Hill’s octogenarian sensuality, making women take another look.

Moving from Gubbio to Spoletto, Don Matteo – unlike his parishioners – has served his Church faithfully and loyally in his travels around the world. He is more than a spiritual guide, missionary, confessor and confident. His ministry to the poor, dispossessed, disenfranchised, downtrodden and forgotten has him play a variety of roles: a prison chaplain in the U.S.; performing weddings and baptisms; building hospitals and schools, fixing broken people and objects, and performing emergency medicine in South America; helping people get jobs and starting soup kitchens; teaching religion courses; coaching rugby and training boxers. He also visits the sick and dying; he comforts the guilty, whose souls he is always trying to save by helping them avow their guilt, thereby alleviating their burden because only then can they truly obtain God’s grace and forgiveness while guided by the padre’s homilies, parables, mini sermons and quotes of famous people.

Enrico Oldoini envisioned Don Matteo as part Everyman and part Chesterton cleric who goes beyond the template with sometimes subtle, sometimes cringe-worthy scripts, supported by a formidable and superb cast of actors who develop their characters organically with help from the writers and directors. Oldoini’s genius lies in grafting 16^th Century Italian Commedia dell’arte stock characters to a modern literary genre providing comic relief and rounding out plot lines. First and foremost is Mareschiallo Cecchini (Nino Frassica) — the MILITARY/POLICE OFFICER — full of bravado and swagger, who misinterprets what he sees and hears, yet always involves others in his schemes. Pippo (Francesco Scali), the sacristan, is the silly servant – ARLECCHINO — who is inept, incompetent and lazy. Natalina (Nathalie Guetta) is the housekeeper — COLUMBINA — at the rectory who is not only motherly to the children passing through her charge but also savvy, demanding and straight-forward. She is eternally optimistic and looking for love; she does not put up with anyone’s bad temper although she has many tantrums herself especially when duped or disappointed.

As a member of a distinguished and prominent cadre of clerical crime fighters, Don Matteo — the popular, personable, photogenic -– man of God and man of the people stands out for many reasons and for all seasons.