About Don Matteo
Don Matteo is one of Italian television's most beloved and enduring series, a warm cozy mystery produced by Lux Vide and Rai Fiction for RAI 1. It follows a kindly small-town priest who, with quiet patience and a deep understanding of human nature, helps solve the crimes that ruffle his peaceful community. Riding his trusty bicycle through cobbled streets, Don Matteo listens where others interrogate, and again and again he gently outpaces the local Carabinieri, not by force but by compassion and insight.
For its first seasons the show is set in the medieval Umbrian town of Gubbio, later moving to the equally picturesque Spoleto. Across both towns the formula stays comforting and familiar: a self-contained mystery each week, a cast of warm recurring locals, and the affectionate tug-of-war between the priest and the station's blustering officers. At the heart of the comedy is Marshal Cecchini, the well-meaning Carabiniere whose pride and good humor make him both the priest's foil and his devoted friend.
Running since 2000 and spanning fourteen seasons, Don Matteo became a national institution, with Terence Hill defining the title role for more than two decades before Raoul Bova stepped in as a new priest, Don Massimo, to carry the parish forward. Treated in a gentle, non-graphic style and grounded in themes of forgiveness, faith, and community, the series remains a Sunday-evening fixture that several generations of Italian families have grown up watching together.
