A lush Mediterranean melodrama set against Fascist Italy’s tumultuous 1920s, “Hotel Portofino” introduces American audiences to Oliver Dench.
As Season 2 begins Sunday night on PBS, Dench’s Lucian Ainsworth is struggling in a doomed marriage, completely alienated from his father and extremely close to his mother, the beautiful Bella (the series’ top-billed star Natascha McElhone) who runs the luxury Italian Riviera resort hotel of the title.
“It is absolutely a troubled marriage. It’s tragic,” Dench, 30, began in a Zoom interview from his London flat. “because there’s not really any wrongdoing in either party.
“They’re just two people who shouldn’t be married, who clearly aren’t in love with each other. The first time we see them in Series 2, they’re trying their best to rub along in some small way.
“But they are two characters who suffered from different mental health ailments, so it’s nigh on impossible and just breaks my little heart to imagine people in that circumstance.”
Lucian, Dench knows, “still suffers from PTSD from World War One. He has night terrors, all kinds of things that have exhibited themselves. I’ve always interpreted it as some quite serious depression. But there’s all sorts of allusions to him finally getting himself out of a hole at the time we start the series.
“I can only imagine countless people who fought in World War One and would have experienced the stories you can read of people in their survivor’s guilt. Especially people in Lucian’s position, people who are in charge of other men, other boys. Countless boys you suppose who lost their lives.
“It sounds like a terrible situation to me — and my own struggles with mental health are quite close to my interest. That’s something that I’ve always thought was quite a big part of Lucian’s character. Fleeing from that is where we first see him at the beginning of Season 2.”
Dench’s own mental health issues? Do they afford a comradeship with Lucian? A particular insight?
“I’ve never fought in World War One fortunately, because I don’t know if I would have survived. I don’t have PTSD. But I’ve had my bouts with less than perfect mental health.
“Maybe that’s why it’s something that I identify with so strongly. It’s never very easy.”
What was easy for Dench was following in his great-aunt Dame Judi Dench’s footsteps. “My granddad” – Dench’s older brother – “was an actor and I think my parents were more open to my acting because they knew people like my granddad who worked in this world.
“I was just lucky,” he added, “to find that this is what I wanted to do.”
“Hotel Portofino” airs on PBS Sundays at 8pm and simultaneously is available to stream on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel and PBS Passport.
