Oliver Dench: 'Hotel Portofino' is a human story of love, sympathy, struggle

NEW YORK, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- British actor Oliver Dench says the events and themes addressed in his 1920s-set drama, Hotel Portofino, are still surprisingly relevant in 2023.

Primarily a romance, the series also explores family dynamics, divisions in class and race, gender roles, crime, corruption, fascism and political intrigue.

"As long as there have been homo sapiens doing their best, there have been human stories of sympathy and love and struggle," Dench -- Oscar winner Judi's great-nephew -- told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

"While the time period is definitely there [anchoring the show], it doesn't surprise me that any of these things, if done with humanity in the eye, are still relevant."

Season 2 of Hotel Portofino premieres Sunday in the United States on PBS after a run in the United Kingdom on ITV.

Co-starring Natascha McElhone, Mark Umbridge, Louisa Binder, Claude Scott-Mitchell, Lucy Akhurst and Olivia Morris, it tells the story of the aristocratic Ainsworth family who move from England to Italy to run a small seaside inn after the Spanish flu pandemic and in between two world wars.

Dench plays World War I veteran and aspiring painter Lucian Ainsworth.

"Lucian has a lot going on in Season 2," Dench said.

"He is trying to be in a healing place. I'll leave it to the drama of the show to see whether or not he gets there. He doesn't necessarily know it, but he goes to Portofino for some respite from the depression and anxiety he has been suffering."

In addition to suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Lucian is also stuck in a love triangle between Rose (Scott-Mitchell), his loathsome father's choice for his bride, and Constance (Binder), the nanny with whom Lucian is intellectually and physically attracted.

"His relationship with Rose is fraught at best. It's sad, really, because they don't dislike each other. She's nice. He's nice. They're doing their best. The problem is -- as everyone can tell from the first season -- they're not in love," Dench said.

"The first season ended with their engagement," he added. "The second season has a year-long time jump, so they've spent quite a lot of time together since then. I think anyone who is not in love, forced into a situation like, that would start to rub each other the wrong way."

These are tragic circumstances even though neither party is intentionally cruel to the other, Dench explained.

"I think it's quite beautifully subtle. It's the 'children will carry the sins of the parent' thing," he said. "The parents have been such horrible goblins to these poor young people."

Season 1 showed that Lucian's best friend Anish (Assad Zaman) -- seen leaving Portofino at the end of Season 2 -- is also in love with Lucian.

Dench said one of his favorite scenes from Season 1 was when Lucian and Anish go swimming and discuss Lucian's impending engagement.

"It was so charged with fraternal and, I think, sexual love between the two of them and I thought how interesting is it that we are exploring sexuality in this period drama space that I maybe haven't seen before," Dench added. "These are all interesting questions to be raised."

Dench warned that Lucian's interpersonal relationship issues are amplified in Season 2.

"Some of his friendships from the first season are maybe more distant," he said.

"Lucian has never seen eye-to-eye with his father. He's very much a mama's boy," Dench added. "He loves his mother dearly. If anything, I think she's had a bit too much of a loose reign on him because of their closeness, their intimacy makes him feel emotionally a bit spoiled."

Wanting to spend time with his mother is one of the reasons why Lucian returns to Italy from England.

"Being forced into proximity with his dad is a sad, poisonous side effect of that, which i don't think is pleasant for either of them," Dench noted.

That said, it would be impossible not to find some happiness in such a stunning locale.

"In the first season, we meet Lucian as this hedonist, who is already enjoying all the glory that Italy has to offer. In the second season -- without giving too much away -- it is him returning to that place he loved so much and rediscovering that pleasure," he added.

"That is quite a lucky place to be, as an actor, because it lets you try and be as mindful as possible and just take in everything that is beautiful and stunning around you and, in the place like the place that we shoot, that's very easy to do."