Hotel Costiera Review
Director: Adam Bernstein and Giacomo Martelli
Date Created: 2025-09-24 15:51
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Hotel Costiera Review: Directed by Adam Bernstein and Giacomo Martelli, this six-episode Prime Video series is set on the beautiful coast of Positano, Italy. Luxury hotel fixer and half-Italian ex-U.S. Marine Daniel De Luca appears as played by Jesse Williams. He co-stars alongside Jordan Alexandra, Amanda Campana, Alejandra Onieva, and Sam Haygarth as characters with connections to hotel personnel and tourists. From what we know of the series from the trailer and description, the series seems a mix of high-living story-telling and mystery and crime. With a glamorous lifestyle on the side. For as much as Daniel struggles with the high-rolling visitors’ problems, he also struggles with the mystery of missing Alice, the hotel owner’s daughter.
Hotel Costiera Review
There is no denying that Hotel Costiera Series makes full use of its location. Southern Italy has one of the world’s loveliest shorelines, and each scene looks like a postcard. When I got through the first episode, though, I could already see that the setting was carrying a lot more of the show than the story. Rather than integrate the mood and story together, though, the visuals were a distraction from poor writing. It looks sumptuous at the hotel but the issues that bring Daniel out are so boring that no amount of scenic setting saves them.
Each episode features a fresh issue or problem that needs to be resolved by Daniel at the hotel, with the plot of the missing girl as a background. I first felt that structuring Hotel Costiera could become suspenseful as an Italian production. But as a plot of the “case of the week” type, the problems were shallowly resolved. The problems, from thefts through lesser conflicts, are neatly resolved and of no genuine peril. Even as a plot of a kidnap takes flight, suspense you’d desire doesn’t happen. I found myself checking the clock more than once.
As the lead, the best part of the Prime Video series Hotel Costiera is Jesse Williams. Daniel appears charming, subtly intense, and like a guy with the chops for high-stakes jobs. His writing doesn’t make him much more than that, though. For a good part of the series, he’s a visitor muddling through one small problem and another and doesn’t quite seem like a legitimate fixer with high-stakes problems. The supporting actors try their best to inject their characters with vibrancy, and Amanda Campana as Alice has some good action of herself, but the characters are half-finished. They are quirky, but with too little personality that I become engaged.
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Perhaps the largest problem with Prime Video’s Hotel Costiera is tone. It wants to be a mix of crime drama and flippant entertainment but it cannot quite strike a middle ground. These kidnapping episodes of chases and violence are positioned as such mild events that they become ineffective. It seems almost as if the directors were shy and unwilling to get a little grimy. Even the acts of comic relief cannot quite pull off and settle into that uncomfortable middle ground of neither being snappy and humorous nor slap-your-knee humorous. As a watcher, I felt as if the show was trying a little too hard at being safe and thus became forgettable.
What also bothered me is that Hotel Costiera Series feels old-fashioned. How the episodes are constructed has a flinty quality that makes one wistful about shows of the 90s that used to tie everything up neatly with a bow. What used to be acceptable at the beginning of the last century no longer quite suffices with the age of sophisticated storytelling and intellectually driven thrills. I wished the series could evoke greater depth, greater nuance and shades of grey, and yet it played everything safe.
The saddest part is that Hotel Costiera had real potential. World-class environment, good cast, and an interesting idea of a fixer at a high-end hotel. What we could’ve gotten as a tight and suspenseful series was the exact opposite. Its writers seem scared to actually dive deep with the characters and resolve real issues. Even the season-long narrative with Alice missing that should’ve come as a shock felt predictable.
Prime Video Hotel Costiera Review: Summing Up
To be honest, after watching through all of the Italian series Hotel Costiera episodes, I was left disappointed. Of course, the show can be watched if you simply desire ambient viewing or if you like seeing the Italian coastline on television. However, as a mystery or dramatic show, it doesn’t succeed. There are no characters that linger with you later, the crimes are uninteresting, and the overarching plot doesn’t quite hold. Hence, this show feels like a letdown.
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