'A Taste For Murder' Episode 2 Brings Torta della Nonna & Trouble
The Torta della Nonna may have been delicious, but now the restaurant may be in trouble. Things don’t look so idyllic anymore in 'A Taste for Murder.'
Despite the show being a case-of-the-week series, BritBox released the series premiere of A Taste for Murder as a two-episode set. The second installment opens with a scene at Tiberius’s Leap, the precipitous cliffs used as an execution site by the Roman Emperor. Now it’s the haunt of rock climbers. As a young woman works up her nerve to abseil down the sheer rockface, she spots something unusual – a splash of red on the rocks below. It’s the body of a woman wearing a red dress.
As yet, Met officer DCI Joe Mottram is oblivious of what will be his next case, busy teaching his daughter Angelica how to ride a scooter. The helmet is non-negotiable, and riding on the mainland is absolutely forbidden. As Angelica gives him a ride back to the restaurant, Inspector Lara Sarrancino flags them down and asks for assistance with the case. As he hesitates, Angelica revs up and rides away, effectively deciding for him.
Lara’s deputy, Gianni Gallo, is already at the crime scene. It could have been an accident, he tells them. The last photo on her phone is a selfie taken at the top of the cliff mid-afternoon of the day before. Lara wants Joe to speak to the U.K. authorities, but he wants to satisfy his curiosity first – who was the victim, Shannon Headley? He and Lara search her hotel room, where they discover Shannon wore haute couture and also had a supply of fentanyl. The manager says she visited the nearby salon, Viviana’s, and the only unusual thing about her visit was that a “Manny Sanghera” made the hotel reservation.
Manny (Hari MacKinnon) turns out to be her fiancé; he seems devastated. However, when pressed for his whereabouts, he admits he had been “meeting a friend” in Positano with whom he had lunch and drinks before going to her apartment. Awkward! He’d found the “friend” through a dating app, Girl Cupid, which Shannon created. She apparently claimed her business success was due to her high sex drive.
Back at the restaurant, Gennaro is busy with paperwork and tells Joe he can’t have a cooking lesson today, nor does he want help with the accounts. He’s clearly in a bad mood and admits to Joe that it was very hard when Sofia left Capri, and even harder when she told him she would not return. He always thought that she would eventually take over the restaurant. But now, he says, he’s glad she didn’t, and ends the conversation.
Joe returns from a run to be scolded by Elena for exercising on an empty stomach in the heat. He asks Elena if he made the right decision in hiring Angelica a scooter, and looks surprised when she says his daughter is very sensible for her age. Their conversation is interrupted by a call from Lara, who summons him to the mortuary, where they will meet Shannon’s father, Anton Headley (Rupert Holliday-Evans).
Angelica may not be as sensible as Elena thinks, heading to the mainland with Daniele, and letting him persuade her to take off her helmet. We see them next on the ferry, drinking beer and kissing. Daniele is not on his best behavior today, indulging in a touch of shoplifting; Angelica is not impressed.
Joe sees Angelica (minus helmet) and Daniele ride by, but he’s working and distracted by Headley attacking Manny, accusing him of murder. Joe and Gianni separate the two men and drag them inside. Manny won’t press charges, and Headley admits he used to like Manny, until he saw him on a date with another woman. When he told his daughter, she said he didn’t understand modern relationships.
Headley insisted on a prenup, as Shannon was about to sell her app for £20 million. Manny supposedly promised he’d sign it, but there’s no such document in her hotel room. As they head out to his car, Headley admits he didn’t want Shannon to go to Italy with Manny, despite his never having been there. She was afraid of Italian traffic, involved in a bad crash that caused severe enough damage to make her switch her dominant hand to the right. She took fentanyl for the nerve pain. Joe goes straight back to look at Shannon’s phone again and realizes her selfie is flipped – a logo on her clothing is mirror-imaged – to make her appear to be using her right hand.
Lara has found hotel video footage of a man following Shannon, but Gianni has the real prize: a shredded copy of the prenup, now being painstakingly glued back together. Joe is interrupted by a text from Elena that Angelica is back. They wind up in a shouting match, and he forbids her to see Daniele again. Naturally, she stomps out just as Lara shows up with the tox report. She invites Joe out for a drink as thanks, and he tells her about Sofia. The driver of the hit-and-run car was never caught. The worst part of it, he tells her, is not being able to investigate.
Back at the restaurant, Elena asks Joe if he’d like to help make a cake for a friend’s birthday, a Torta della Nonna (Granny’s Birthday Cake). The next morning, while Angelica showers, Joe sees a text on her phone arrive from Daniele, and is shocked to see a bottle of prescription medication in the open bedside table drawer. Joe immediately thinks Daniele gave them to her, but Elena admits the pills are hers. Angelica is overwhelmed and anxious, though she admits she should have asked Joe if it was ok to give her sleeping pills.
She tells him that she understands how hard it is to parent without role models, because of the situation, referring to Joe’s family. He gets defensive as she claims Sofia told her everything. (Oh, Elena, you’ve blown it again.) Shaken, Joe leaves, and Elena follows him down to the water’s edge. Joe breaks down and starts talking about his mother’s addiction, only to find that Sofia hadn’t mentioned it at all. (So what was the situation Sofia told Elena about?)
The mystery man has been identified as Sandro Totti (Harry Taurasi), a swimming pool cleaner. The app finally responds with locals who used it, leading them to Signora Peluso (Edita Karadole), whose late son, Pepe, apparently has been getting around from beyond the grave. A bottle with Angelica catches Joe’s eye. The Signora tells him it was given to her by Pepe’s girlfriend, Viviana, who runs the beauty salon.
As Lara and Joe make their way back to the station, they come across Viviana and Sandro and arrest them. Sandro admits to having an affair with Shannon and sent her to Viviana’s because she was tense. (Since Viviana doesn’t speak English, he wasn’t worried about either of them mentioning him. What a prince.) He took Shannon to see Tiberius’s Leap at 7 a.m., and left before 9 a.m., but he didn’t go back in the afternoon since he had pools to clean, as confirmed by his clients. Meanwhile, Joe notices that Shannon’s fiancé’s name is spelled Manuele, and his passport shows he was born in Bologna, despite his claim that he’d never been to Italy.
Joe returns to the restaurant, where Elena reports that Angelica came home by nine, as instructed, and was in bed by ten — she sent her grandmother a photo upon her arrival home as proof. But Joe discovers she was out with Daniele well past curfew, and she’d altered her wristwatch.
He rushes back to the station to look at Shannon’s selfie, which was both time-edited and flipped to validate alibis. Sandro is Manny’s cousin, and Viviana applied the fentanyl to Shannon’s skin during her massage. Manny is conveniently at the resort near the top of the cliffs when Lara and Joe show up. He runs, and Lara rolls her eyes and sighs as they set off after him. Manny heads for the cliff edge and threatens to jump. Lara tells him to go ahead; it will mean less paperwork, but Joe pulls him to safety.
After the arrest, Lara and Joe shake hands, laugh with relief, and congratulate each other. She says she’ll see him around, and he responds that she probably won’t, as she gazes after him. (You softie, Lara!)
Back at the restaurant, a customer, local mafioso Fabio Pigozzi (Yuri Buzzi), is eating calmly as unusual noises emanate from the kitchen. Joe finds Elena in a fury, screaming at Gennaro and throwing plates. In contrast to its first episode, the magic of cooking has not soothed, cheered, or restored peace.
(Good heavens! Mrs. Hughes actually knows the F-word!)
A new episode of BritBox’s A Taste For Murder will release every Tuesday through May 5, 2026.
A Taste for Murder
as a two-episode set
