Coming to MHz Choice in October (2018)

From the producers of Detective Montalbano comes a new season of chaos, comedy and mystery! In the idyllic town of Pineta on the beautiful Tuscan coast lies a charming local watering hole, Barlume. Owned and operated by ex-mathematician Massimo Viviani, it’s home to a gang of eccentric septuagenarians who moonlight as amateur detectives, attempting to solve a series of increasingly baffling murders (two per year) that seem to strike when the weather gets hot. It’s almost too much for poor Massimo to take – and this new season sees him hit a breaking point! The entire Barlume gang is back for more crazy fun – and some unexpected surprises…

Trond Espen Seim stars as Norwegian private eye Varg Veum, a classic investigator in the style of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer. Based on the international best-selling novels by Gunnar Staalesen, this modern noir series is distinguished by dark humor, insightful characterization and unremitting suspense. Bjørn Floberg co-stars as Varg’s best friend and nemesis, Inspector Hamre.

Agatha Christie’s world-famous mysteries are delightfully adapted in this series of French TV movies – sexy, witty and definitely addictive!

Trond Espen Seim and Bjørn Floberg return as Varg Veum and Inspector Hamre for the second (and, to date, final) season of modern noir mysteries based on the novels by acclaimed Norwegian author Gunnar Staalesen.

German made-for-TV movie Luther and I chronicles the life of Katharina von Bora, a 16^th-century nun who ends up playing a major role in the Reformation revolution. After reading Martin Luther’s writings about the freedom of the individual, she decides to leave her cloistered life in the convent and join his reform movement in Wittenberg. Directed by Julia von Heinz, winner of the 2017 Baden-Baden TV Film Festival award for Best Director and co-starring Bavarian TV Award Nominee for Best Actress Karoline Schuch as Katarina Luther and Bavarian TV Award Winner for Best Actor Devid Striesow as Martin Luther.

The lavish two-part historical drama Reformation presents the story of the little monk from Wittenberg who put the ‘protest’ into Protestant and rocked the religious establishment of his time. His big beef: the Church’s teaching that people could pay their way into heaven. Rome threw everything at him short of execution, but the damage was done. Within years of his original protest, Germans would be reading the Bible for themselves in their own dialect, thanks to a vigorous translation written by an unstoppable, ex-communicated Martin Luther. And for a special treat, one of Luther’s arch opponents, Cardinal Albrecht, is played by Joachim Król, who stars in the first four episodes of MHz Choice’s Donna Leon’s Brunetti Mysteries.

First broadcast in 1984, The Octopus(La Piovra) was an international phenomenon, running for ten seasons until 2001 and making a star of its lead actor, Michele Placido. This gritty Mafia thriller broke new ground as it explored wars between law enforcement and the global criminal network based in Sicily. The powerful score by Academy Award winning composer Ennio Morricone (Cinema Paradiso, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The Mission) evokes the saga’s tragic trajectory and the tension of a world fraught with danger.

He’s one hot cop and Italy’s answer to Dirty Harry – or so he thinks! Giampaolo Morelli (‘Song of Napoli’) stars as the lovable doof who works the mean streets of Bologna in a series of stylized and comic misadventures.

Mary Higgins Clark is the Queen of Suspense, with over 3.7 million books sold worldwide. She is the all-time bestselling fiction author in France, where she received the Grand Prix de Littérature Policiè re in 1980 and was named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in the Legion of Honor. Now, the acclaimed novelist is reinvented in a new series of TV movies based on her most popular mysteries, with thrilling plots, gorgeous scenery and nerve-shattering suspense.