Inspector Coliandro

L'ispettore Coliandro is a series of Italian tongue-in-cheek television movies directed by Marco Manetti and Antonio Manetti, and written by the crime writer Carlo Lucarelli and starring Giampaolo Morelli in the title role of the Inspector Coliandro. According to the actors and the directors, Coliandro is an Italian crime television series aimed "at young audiences." In fact this is probably so. The policemen in Italian fiction and shows like Il commissario Montalbano are stalwart servants of the law, and usually save the day. Inspector Coliandro saves the day also, but mostly by a combination "of luck and [his younger partner's] intuition." He is ignorant, crude, and despised by all his colleagues except this partner, who is the only one who view him the way he views himself: as a hero worthy of the good guys in American cop movies. The humor of the series is manifest in the difference between the way Coliandro sees himself and the way the rest of the world sees him. Coliandro's very name is a play on the Italian word coglione - a word literally meaning "ball", but most usually used with the meaning of "asshole" - and he must continually correct its pronunciation.