I’d started to think that the title was his in perpetuity, but after 14 years of officially being The Most Enthusiastic Person Hot Press Has Ever Spoken To, Andrew WK has been supplanted by Walter Iuzzolino.
An Anglophile Italian who left Genoa in his early 20s to study at the London International Film School, he’s the man behind Channel4.com’s Walter Presents... hub, which also permeates Channel 4 and More4’s conventional telly programming.
“The aim is to be the HBO of subtitles,” Walter says of the United Nations of series he’s assembled. “People think that subtitles mean art house and watching a tap drip in black & White for 15 minutes, but these are all shows that have been massive hits and award-winners in their own countries. The benchmarks for me are Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and House Of Cards.”
Walter Presents... got off to a spectacularly good start with Deutschland 83, a Cold War thriller whose seven episodes are available for free online bingeing.
“The Channel 4 viewing figure for Deutschland 83 was 2.4 million for the final episode,” he resumes. “With catch-up, that’s now reached four million, which is a staggering figure for a show that didn’t have the obvious immediate appeal of, say, The Killing or The Bridge which is missing girl, body in the forest, two slightly dysfunctional cops... It has the elegance and gravitas of The Lives Of Others, and the slapstick of Goodbye Lenin.”
Emboldened by Deutschland 83’s success, Walter Presents... are about to unleash five series that push the international TV envelope even further.
“The first is Locked Up, a Spanish show that’s almost Orange Is The New Black meets Prison Break meets The Wire. The inmates are these gorgeous women who all look like models. There are lots of lesbian shower scenes and stuff like that, but it’s also a mind-blowingly brilliant ‘where’s the money?’ thriller with these violent but beautiful criminals scheming to get their hands on €9 million, which one of them has stolen and buried. The first episode is going out at the beginning of May on Channel 4, and then the rest will immediately be available as a box-set to binge on.”
We’ve had a sneak preview and, yep, it’s everything that Walter says it is. He’s also expecting our collective passions to be inflamed by The Neighbours, a Dutch psycho-sexual drama which topped the ratings when it was shown at home over ten consecutive nights.
“We think that Holland is all Big Brother and those other tightly formatted Endemol shows, but they’ve got some truly fantastic drama,” Walter proffers. “Again it’s incredibly naughty and sexy in a Fatal Attraction sort of a way. This super-hot couple who are expecting their first child move to a new home in the suburbs but in tragic circumstances lose the baby soon after it’s born. They seek comfort in the friendship of their neighbours who appear to be friendly and normal - he’s a cop and she’s a fitness instructor – but turn out to be these morally corrupt swingers. The sexual thing between the four ends up in murder and blackmail; it’s a really dark, uncomfortable piece. Both of the couples in the show are couples in real life, which means the chemistry between them is amazing.
“We’ve another Dutch show, which in my opinion is one of the finest international dramas of all-time. It’s called Penoza, which means ‘underworld’, and has an avalanche of awards. It’s a kind of female Sopranos in which a gangster dies and his wife, Carmen, has to take over the business. Over the five seasons you see the kids grow up and all the other characters age in front of you.”
From the other side of the border comes Clan, a Belgian black comedy, which Walter credits as having the “worst TV baddie ever!”
“When this revoltingly abusive guy dies, we find out that his wife and her four sisters had all tried to kill him but only one succeeded,” he beams. “To me, it’s like stuffing your face with Belgian chocolates; absolutely divine. We’re going to show it in July as an alternative to the Olympics.” Knowing our penchant for sex & drugs & rock ‘n’ roll, Walter has picked out a show especially for Hot Press readers.
“You’ll absolutely adore this extreme, violent series from Brazil which if it were American would be on the cover of Rolling Stone,” he resumes. “It’s called Magnifica 70 and is Mad Men meets Boogie Nights set in Sao Paolo. The Dan Draper character is a state censor who in episode one you see viewing this really trashy film called The Hot Student. He becomes infatuated with the lead actress who reminds him of the love of his life who died in really terrible circumstances. It turns into a battle between erotic obsession and political repression.”
There’s also a chance that Walter Presents... viewers will get to see some shows as Gaeilge.
“We almost bought this brilliant, Scandi-style Irish series last year, which I’m thinking of re-visiting,” he concludes. “The more culturally specific we can be the better.”