Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy – Season One & Two [2021 – 2022] on Paramount Plus

Stanley Tucci Searching for Italy is a fresh breeze in a sea of boring food documentaries. Glowing with vibrant colors and vitality, and local problems.

In this CNN culinary travel series, Italy is beautiful, and the food of Italy is beautiful. Not insignificantly, Tucci is beautiful, too.

Dedicating each episode to one of the twenty regions of Italy, Tucci uses local food to illuminate place and vice versa wherever we go with him on this journey. Searching for Italy is beautiful to look at, and without a doubt, taste. Yet to Tucci’s credit and that of the producers, in Sicily, and other regions, the problems of the province aren’t ignored. From the regional inequalities to the local mafias.

To be honest, I’ve never been to Italy, and I always wanted to. Halfway through the first season, I started looking at plane tickets. That’s how sold I am.

As a bonus, you get real places following Tucci wandering around. Some are really expensive (over one hundred euros on Google Maps), and others are very affordable (10 to 20 euros).

If you’re a fan of true pizza (not the north American mess), fresh pasta, delicious lemon confections, sea food, or beer and chocolate rizotto, this show was made for you. The scenery and narration also help.

Should You Watch It?

What attracted me was the food. What got me to stay and finish watching? This is a marvelously well-written show, briskly paced, and makes the rest of the food-TV competition as appetizing as last night’s mozzarella sticks.

Where Can I Watch It?

Both seasons of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy are now streaming on Paramount+ in Canada.