Jesse Williams in 'Hotel Costiera.' Virginia Bettoja/Prime Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text The Italian dessert zabaglione is a deceptively easy thing. Egg yolks. Sugar. A small quantity of booze. It's whisked into a frothy custard. Then you can serve it with berries or a biscuit or something, but a good zabaglione should be simple, delicate and airy. Although it has very little delicacy, Amazon's new Italian-set dramedy Hotel Costiera is as simple and airy as TV shows get. Hotel Costiera The Bottom Line Frothy, low-impact escapism. Airdate: Wednesday, Sep. 24 (Prime Video)Cast: Jesse Williams, Maria Chiara Giannetta, Jordan Alexandra, Antonio Gerardi, Sam Haygarth, Tommaso Ragno, Amanda Campana, Pierpaolo Spollon, Alejandra Onieva, Jean-Hugues AngladeCreators: Elena Bucaccio, Matthew Parkhill and Francesco Arlanch, from an idea by Luca Bernabei A showcase for gorgeous scenery and an ensemble heavily populated by gorgeous actors, Hotel Costiera is so lightweight as to threaten to float off entirely into the ether. But at a moment when many people are in a perpetual state of gloominess - courtesy of the news, social media doomscrolling or streaming/cable dramas that confuse lack of literal illumination with profundity - the pleasantly sunny escapism is difficult to resent. Related Stories Business The Hollywood Reporter and Amazon Ads Most Influential Trailblazers in Marketing Dinner: See the Photos Business Amazon and Netflix Ink Major Advertising Deal It's nothing, but it's a not-unpleasant nothing. Jesse Williams plays Daniel DeLuca, a former Marine working as a fixer for a luxury hotel on the Amalfi Coast, near Positano. Daniel, whose long-estranged father was Italian, works at the behest of the hotel's owner (Tommaso Ragno's Augusto) and general manager (Maria Chiara Giannetta's Adele, Augusto's daughter). He retrieves kidnapped dogs, searches for missing spouses and negotiates within the Italian bureaucracy to secure the transport of human remains, all as required. For his troubles, Daniel has an absurdly nice room at the hotel and he apparently receives enough money that he can pay a team of locals to assist on the job. Daniel's crew includes stunning British expat Genny (Jordan Alexandra), down-on-his-luck aristocrat Tancredi (Sam Haygarth) and trattoria owner Bigné (Antonio Gerardi), who was apparently Daniel's childhood friend, even though Williams is 44 and looks younger and Gerardi is 57 and looks appropriate to his age. Creators Elena Bucaccio, Francesco Arlanch and Matthew Parkhill aren't especially committed to plausible backstory or character development, mind you. They've crafted what is at heart an innocuous meringue in the vein of USA's "Blue Sky" model of decades past, less twisty than your average Love Boat or Fantasy Island installment. The episodic plots are so lacking in gravity that the series Hotel Costiera resembles most directly isn't White Lotus, in which characters actually die against the vacation backdrop, or something like Burn Notice, in which characters were frequently beaten up and sported bruises and scars for weeks at a time, but rather something like Netflix's animated Pokémon Concierge, in which the highest of high stakes storylines force a hotel fixer to, for example, realize that the best way to get Arcanine unstuck from a slide is through tickling. In addition to the standalone episodic plots, Hotel Costiera has a season-long arc in which Daniel and his crew attempt to track down Augusto's somewhat rebellious younger daughter Alice (Amanda Campana), who may have been abducted, but may actually just be ... someplace else. The Alice storyline becomes more important in the second half of the season, but given that this is the type of show in which swearing is limited, violence is negligible and sexuality is limited to a kiss-and-cutaway, it's hard to worry and impossible to imagine a worst-case scenario more dangerous than a sunburn. Directed by Adam Bernstein and Giacomo Martinelli, this is the dramatic equivalent of bowling with bumpers or crawling like a baby through a child-proofed house with padding on every corner and rubberized covers on every socket. If you invest at all, you invest in the vistas and Williams' abs. Sharing some locations, but no aesthetic aspirations, with Netflix's Ripley, Hotel Costiera is a textbook example for how something can be beautiful without being beautifully photographed. Every frame is flat, overlit and lovely, like watching footage from somebody's Italian vacation shot indifferently on an iPhone. Nobody is going to want to debate the artistic merits of any individual cinematic composition - other than, I'm guessing, the shot of Jesse Williams cradling a purse dog while driving a motorboat on the Gulf of Salerno - but more than a few people will l