Set on Italy’s picturesque Amalfi Coast, Prime Video‘s “Hotel Costiera,” created by Elena Bucaccio, Matthew Parkhill and Francesco Arlanch, is a sufficient action drama, fusing together intrigue, kidnapping and a touch of comedy. Revolving around the luxurious Hotel Costiera, the series follows Daniel De Luca (Jesse Williams), a retired Marine who now uses his talents as a fixer for the hotel. Though he’s well-versed in high-stakes operations, his current role is ensuring that every whim and request of the VIP guests is met. Daniel is used to being at the beck and call of hotelier Augusto (Tommaso Ragno) and his general manager daughter, Adele (Maria Chiara Giannetta). However, his expansive skill set is tested following the disappearance of Augusto’s youngest daughter, Alice (Amanda Campana). A solid show that doesn’t stray too far from the status quo, “Hotel Costiera” has enough juice to pull audiences in but not quite enough sparkle to make it memorable.
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The series begins amid a retrieval. Zipping along the vast cliffs of Italy’s breathtaking Sorrentine Peninsula shoreline on his moped bike, Daniel pulls up to a villa. Though he tells the men inside he’s run out of gas, it quickly becomes apparent he has turned up at their front door for a very different reason. As the scene unfolds, the audience learns that Daniel is there to retrieve a guest’s stolen dog. The pooch’s safe return is easy work for Daniel, but the following day, the stakes get higher after another guest goes missing during a boating excursion with his much younger wife. The man’s adult daughters quickly begin throwing accusations at the wife. As rumors regarding the guest’s highly publicized business ventures start to swirl, Daniel calls in backup to try to uncover what really happened.
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Though the level-headed fixer works on minor cases alone, for larger tasks, he collaborates with his comrades. Bigné (Antonio Gerardi) owns a cafe in town, and his connections across the villages are vast. Tancredi (Sam Haygarth) is an English aristocrat whose resources are limitless. Finally, Genny (Jordan Alexandra), the most vicious of them all, often handles the more delicate matters in the crew’s assignments. When a severed hand washes up on shore, Daniel and his team realize something much bigger is at play, and they must do everything they can to solve the mystery while shielding the hotel from any bad publicity or scandal.
Much of the six-episode first season of “Hotel Costiera” continues in this fashion. Daniel and his crew take on a mystery per episode. Though most of these missions are unremarkable, Episode 4, “Hassan,” is the most intriguing. When the hotel staff discovers a small boy hiding in one of the produce delivery trucks, Daniel and Genny shift into high gear to protect the child while trying to find out what led him to seek out the hotel as a haven. The show also sprinkles in factoids about Daniel’s military past, his upbringing in Italy and his fractured family dynamic. Still, the series takes it up a notch when Augusto’s rebellious younger daughter, Alice, fails to return home after a fight with her father, and Daniel realizes this particular predicament might be beyond even his capabilities.
As Daniel tries to track Alice’s last moves before she vanished, he recognizes that not everyone surrounding the missing young woman has been transparent about why she took off in the first place. Also, as Daniel and his crew draw closer to the truth, a decades-long feud and conspiracy are revealed, which could jeopardize Augusto’s family’s legacy.
Overall, “Hotel Costiera” works just fine, and Williams is charming, as always, while the rest of the cast are solid and up for what their roles require. But in the immense television landscape, the cases Daniel and his team dive into are only par for the course.
All six episodes of “Hotel Costiera” premiere Sept. 24 on Prime Video.