Get ready to head to Puglia, the heel of Italy’s famous boot, when Inspector Gerri arrives on More4 in the UK – starting at 9pm on Friday 8 August 2025. The programme will also be available to stream on Walter Presents.

Episode one begins with a series of disconcerting cut scenes. We go back and forth between a young woman desperately running for her life on the beach and Gregorio ‘Gerri’ Esposito (Giulio Beranek) in bed with one of his female colleagues. It’s a dramatic, jarring, if somewhat icky opening to a programme that otherwise shows plenty of promise.

When he arrives at the police station in Trani the next morning, Gerri and his older partner Marinetti (Fabrizio Ferracane) are sent to the beach where the young woman lies dead. When she’s identified as Rosella Albani, the 18-year-old daughter of a prominent lawyer in this wealthy town, they realise this will be a tricky case. Her parents are cagey and evasive from the start. For some reason, their home security system was switched off the night of the crime and they were playing poker with a couple called the La Guardias and Elvira Longo – all wealthy, powerful people.

Immediately, the case reminds Gerri of the unsolved murder of a Romani girl in the nearby city of Bari. Physically similar, the victims were strangled and their bodies left posed in foetal position. So he pushes hard to get as much information as he can from the family, early on. Too hard. By taking Albani’s laptop without a warrant, he upsets the police chief Santeramo, who reveals his nasty side.

Santeramo dresses down Gerri in front of the entire unit, referring to his Romani origins and suspending him for 24 hours. One or two racist remarks are made by his colleagues, but new arrival Lea Cohen (Valentina Romani), who is Jewish, sympathises with him. More than that, she’s seen Signore Albani’s name come up in a corruption case – one that possibly links Albani, the La Guardias and Elvira Longo to organised crime.

As the police chief is so touchy about upsetting them, could he be corrupt too? And could Rosella Albani’s murder have been a warning or revenge killing?

Also in Gerri’s corner is his senior partner Marinetti, who smooths things over back at HQ and gets Gerri back on the case. Although Gerri is a good investigator, he’s an outsider who ruffles feathers. Some of his male colleagues are jealous of his good looks, and while Gerri can’t hold down a relationship he seems magnetic to women. With a gentle demeanour, he’s shy and sultry, with piercing brown eyes and sculpted features, and he keeps his past a secret.

But this murder and that of the Romani girl have awakened something in him, and Gerri can’t help but press forward with his investigation. Another female character that seems drawn to him is Lavinia La Guardia, friend of the victim, heiress of a powerful family. She follows Gerri to his local bar and says that she knows who killed Rosella. He’s not sure he can trust her but Albani’s account of the night in question is flawed.

At the risk of infuriating his superiors even further, Geri leaks information to a journalist, but it bears fruit as he learns more about the victim in Bari…

This is just a fraction of what comes out in the first episode, so expect plenty of misdirection, twists, turns, red herrings and romantic complications across the eight instalments ahead. Nothing is going to be straightforward for Gerri – although he has allies, his chief and all the characters connected to Rosella Albani seem intent on blocking his path.

The programme is titled Inspector Gerri and our main character is very much centre stage. There is something captivating in Beranek’s performance – he plays a tormented soul but with a light touch. There is a sense that still waters run deep. While he’s insistent about his theory, Gerri is not a detective full of machismo. Empathy and observation are in his arsenal. In conversations with Marinetti’s wife, his womanising nature is peeled back to reveal his vulnerability. In flashbacks to his childhood, there’s a hint that his own mother may have disappeared.

Perhaps the hurt is what drives his impatience and eagerness to connect the two cases. As Marinetti points out, they might be connected but proper evidence is needed to prove it. This is a thoughtful, relatively complex police procedural. It hasn’t been shot with a huge budget, has a minimal look and a grey, chilly feel – a sunny clime depicted in mid winter. The 1980s synth music complements its minimalism. There’s little action, but plenty to ponder as the case and Gerri’s character unfold, and there’s more to it than first meets the eye. Which is what you want in a mystery, right?

Inspector Gerri has arrived on Walter Presents very quickly. It originally aired in Italy in May and June. It consists of eight one-hour episodes with subtitles.

For some hardboiled noir Italiano set in Bari try Cold Summer.