Stucky: A New Italian TV Mystery Series Set in Treviso
Summary: Stucky is an engaging Italian mystery series set in the medieval city of Treviso. Featuring the unconventional and quirky Inspector Stucky, played by Giuseppe Battiston, the show follows an “inverted detective” format similar to Columbo’s, in which the audience sees the crime and the perpetrator from the start. Stucky, who works out of an osteria rather than a police station, relies on his keen observations to crack cases. The series captures the authentic, slower-paced beauty of Treviso, a city often overlooked by tourists compared to nearby Venice.
Premiering July 21, 2026, on MHz Choice, Stucky offers six self-contained, bingeable episodes that blend local culture with clever mystery. It is a must-watch for fans of character-driven detective stories seeking a virtual trip to Italy.
The Italian mystery TV series, Stucky, is set in the city of Treviso and its surrounding towns. Each episode tells an engaging story featuring its crime-solving protagonist, Inspector Stucky.
Treviso is a walled city (in the province of the same name) in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Nestled in this prestigious Prosecco winemaking region, the city is best known to food enthusiasts as the birthplace of tiramisu, the iconic Italian dessert, and for its fertile fields of radicchio.
Nicknamed the “City of Water,” scenic canals and rivers flow through its historic center. Although Treviso is located only 30 minutes from Venice, it receives only a tiny fraction of the tourists who swarm its neighboring city.
Treviso is far less expensive and welcomes mostly Italians rather than foreign visitors. Thus, it promises a slower, more authentic experience of Italian lifestyle and culture.
The Storyline of Stucky
Stucky is based on detective mysteries written by Fulvio Ervas, a native of Veneto.
The first season, which aired on Italian television station Rai 2 in the fall of 2024, includes six episodes, each running about an hour long. Because each one is self-contained, the episodes don’t have to be watched in any particular order.
At the start of each one, the viewer sees the crime in progress and knows “who dun it.” The identity of the victim is quickly learned and the plot revolves around Stucky and his team discovering the motive and evidence that lead to an arrest.
The Cast of Stucky
Giuseppe Battiston, a popular star of Italian screen and television, plays Inspector Stucky (pronounced Stook-ie)
Stucky is an unconventional, unpredictable, quirky but dogged detective who avoids bureaucracy and paperwork by working at a table at his friend and confidante Secondo’s inn (osteria) rather than the Treviso police station (Questura).
Instead of using a notebook, he scribbles his ideas on pieces of paper so he can look at the clues visually and rearrange them. He is extremely observant, picking up details as he tries to piece together each mystery.
While he appears to be disorganized and unassuming, he is persistent in asking questions. He is a master of what is called the “doorknob question” in medical parlance. Before he leaves a suspect or witness, he often stops several yards away to ask “one more question.”
Stucky’s small investigative team includes two younger assistants, Guerra (played by Alessio Pratico) and Landrulli (played by Laura Cravedi) and a medical examiner (Marina, played by Barbora Bobulova). There’s often an awkward push-pull tension between Stucky and Marina.
While Stucky has a team, they don’t really collaborate or function like one. Instead, Stucky uses them primarily to collect evidence and report back to him.
The cast is filled out with different character actors in each episode.
The Link Between Stucky and Lieutenant Columbo
Columbo was a popular American TV series, starring Peter Falk, that aired for 22 seasons in the 60s and 70s. Falk played the role of an unassuming detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Because there are so many similarities between Inspector Stucky and Lieutenant Columbo, some reviewers have called Stucky a “modern Columbo.” Columbo is an Italian-American, and Stucky is an Italian of Persian descent. While Columbo stuck to coffee and soda, Stucky (perhaps, in a nod to Italian culture) often sips on a glass of wine or eats some of the foods of Treviso.
Although Stucky has a much burlier physique, both he and Colombo look disheveled, smoke cigars, are relentless interrogators with sharp minds, think out of the box, and walk the streets wearing long tan trench coats. Both have disarming, non-threatening demeanors.
As in Columbo, most of th
e crime stories investigated in the series involve middle-class or wealthy people.
However, the main link between the two is the similar ways in which the stories are structured. This unique style of storytelling is called an inverted detective story because the viewer knows the perpetrator and the crime from the beginning.
Why Stucky is Bingeable
The characters on the detective’s team are all likable and committed to their work in finding justice. And each episode has a satisfying ending with the perpetrator(s) being taken away for booking.
The show is in Italian, with English subtitles, so you can improve your vocabulary. Also, the series allows you to travel virtually through Treviso and enrich your understanding of Italian culture.
For example, one of Stucky‘s mysteries about art forgery mentions a painting by Boccioni. When I looked it up on Wikipedia, I learned that Umberto Boccioni was a groundbreaking Futurist artist who tragically died at age 33. In another episode, it mentioned a winery in the Prosecco Hills that actually exists on Google Maps.
Not many TV series are set in Treviso like this one, and each episode showcases various aspects of the city—including cobbled streets with overhead porticos, canals and stone bridges, ancient watermills on rivers, terraced hills with vineyards, and more—that whet your appetite to plan another trip to Italy.
Where to Watch Stucky
Mark your calendar: The first 6-episode season of Stucky will premiere in the U.S. and Canada on Tuesday, July 21, 2026, on MHz Choice, a streaming service for foreign-language series and international films with English subtitles.
Stucky was written by Valerio Attanasio and Matteo Visconti and was directed by Valerio Attanasio. A second season of the series is planned for release, with filming already having taken place in Treviso.
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