'A Taste for Murder' Explores the Art of the Ragu
Daria has chosen to cook gnocchetti, half gnocchi, half pasta, which brings back memories for Joe of his late wife.
Warning: This episode includes a depiction of an attempted sexual assault.
In the penultimate episode of Season 1 of A Taste for Murder, a pair of vloggers, Frankie Clayton (Nina Bowers) and Emily O’Brien (Hattie Gotobed), are after a big story for their vlog, You Used To Be Famous (snappy title!). They’re hot on the trail of reclusive retired Hollywood actress Glenda Goodrich. After six weeks of research, they sneak into a luxurious villa, where a dog, happy to see them, chases them into the swimming pool. They find their quarry dead on a sofa, masked, with Italian opera as her background music. The title of this episode is Ragù a Modo Tuo (Ragù Whichever Way You Like It), and it is a mind-bogglingly complicated one: Good luck with it.
Back at the Vinales’ restaurant, Joe is having a cooking lesson with Gennaro. Elena asks Gennaro for his big black book, where he keeps handwritten copies of his recipes and his finances. He doesn’t believe in computers, and he doesn’t want anyone else involved in the accounts because he knows he’s made a mess of them. Elena is distressed because she feels Angelica waitressing is no longer viable after last week’s incident. The girl is off to Naples anyway with her sleazier-by-the-week boyfriend, Daniele, to check out the catering school for him. But when he leaves her in a cafe to allegedly apply for the course, he meets his drug dealer, Fabio Pigozzi. After a manly chat about Daniele’s sexual pursuit of Angelica, in which Fabio suggests he show her who’s in charge, a deal is struck, and a hidden camera team photographs both men.
It’s judgment time for Joe’s cookiRagùRagu with pork belly. Gennaro finds his apprentice has made adaptations to the recipe, as is tradition, adding thyme (from his granny’s beef stew) and balsamic vinegar. Elena and Daria present Joe with a bowl and agree to offer it on today’s menu. Elena suggests Daria sit with him, but at that moment, Inspector Lara Sarrancino arrives to whisk him away from the kitchen to solve a murder. After this heavy-handed attempt at match-making, Daria asks why Elena wants her to get together with Joe – he belongs to Sofia.
First stop at the murder scene is to chat with the gardener Carlo (Antonio Scarpa), who’s only seen his reclusive employer, Mrs. Valerie Pope, a handful of times over the past few years. She always wore a mask and dark glasses, because she was afraid of germs. She had an assistant, Ms. Andrews, who returned to her home three years ago. The scene of death offers only a glass of water and a bottle of eyedrops, and the body may have received an injection. There are no other clues.
Mrs. Pope’s current assistant, Stefan Andrei (Adrian Pezdirc), returns to the villa from a three-day trip to visit family in Bucharest, shocked to find his employer dead. He provides Lara and Joe with a photo ID, in the form of Mrs. Pope’s U.S. passport, and agrees to formally ID the body. Andrei also grabs a copy of her will from the safe and finds that she has left everything to animal shelters, apart from €2m to her plastic surgeon, Dr. Mario Mitrea (Enes Vejzovic).
Lara and Joe inform the vloggers that the victim was not a reclusive film star. After they leave the villa, Joe expresses his belief that they should find another witness to confirm her identity. He asks if Lara fancies a drink, but she is meeting a colleague in narcotics who may have information on Rocco Di Biasi.
Lara and Joe examine photographs of Goodrich, taken ten years apart, which, Joe points out, could be of two entirely different women. The latter one dated from the time of her comeback movie, which critics panned, complaining that her face never moved. The last known photo of Glenda Goodrich is with her husband, Glen Ellwood, taken eight years ago. The two vloggers have posted a photo of Goodrich/Pope they took in the house after finding her body, and both Joe and Lara are furious. There’s a comment on the post that Goodrich’s birth name was Valerie Pope, from one of their 136,000 followers. Frankie and Emily are unrepentant, claiming they were helping, and the police take their phones. The two young women are horrified – what will they do now? Sightsee, Joe suggests; read a book.
Back to Stefan, who confesses that he wasn’t her assistant, but her son. She never acknowledged the relationship, and Stefan grew up with his father. After years of estrangement, they met when she returned to Romania to visit a plastic surgeon. He didn’t hate her, and he did his best to forge a relationship. He’s about to be taken to the station for a DNA test, just as Stefan spots Dr. Mitrea lurking nearby.
At the station, Gianni Gallo hands Lara the autopsy results. (Nearly every time we’ve seen him in the last few episodes, he’s striding in manfully to present Lara with a report.) The autopsy showed Valerie’s heart stopped beating, and Joe thoughtfully explained to Stefan that meant blood could no longer supply her organs (duh). Possibly her frequent surgeries and anesthesia contributed to her death. A used syringe that held a tanning agent was found next to her body. The glass of water showed no contamination with the eyedrops found next to it.
Joe and Lara meet Dr. Mitrea on the terrace of his hotel, where he raises his glass, “To Valerie.” He is shocked that Stefan claimed to be her son; Lara points out that Stefan doesn’t seem to like Mitrea much. Did he object to what the doctor did to his mother’s face? Mitrea claimed the damage was done long before they met in the 1990s. She received a settlement, retired, and disappeared. It was former assistant Miss Andrews who directed her to Mitrea, claiming that she had become a recluse because people are cruel to women and their looks. The hotel manager interrupts to tell Mitrea someone has broken into his room, and they view the damage. Nothing is missing from Mitrea’s billfold or from the drugs he brought, but he admits he visited Valerie on the day of her death to give her the tanning agent.
Joe is still eager to meet with the Di Basio contact that evening, but Dara sends him off to meet with Commissario Curti, who is not pleased to see him. He wanted to discuss how to handle PR strategy for when news got out that a (paid) English cop was solving Italian murders. Curti wants to close out this case as soon as possible to avoid a media frenzy. Joe calms him by telling him that Goodrich/Pope’s death was from natural causes and takes the tox report home for some light kitchen reading.
Daria has chosen to cook gnocchetti, half gnocchi, half pasta, which brings back memories for Joe of his late wife. Good memories, he assures her when she asks if he’d like to stop.
Dariragùragu is totally different from Joe’s, but delicious. He offers to do the dishes (what a guy!), and then they settle down to watch a Glenda Goodrich movie Angelica downloaded for him. They almost let their hands touch as they watch, and … the doorbell rings. It’s Lara, with shots of Daniele dealing from when he and Angelica visited the art school. They’re together now at a beach party. Daria knows the party location, an abandoned beach club, and offers to guide them there.
Angelica has been having a great time, dancing, drinking, and making new friends, while he watches and waits. She’s getting quite drunk. The other women there look on, uneasy, as Daniele moves her away from the party. She’s drunk too much, he explains, and he’s taking her home now. He takes her to an abandoned building, as Joe, Lara, and Daria show up at the party, and it’s clear what his intentions are as Angelica lies unconscious. Joe, furious, attacks Daniele, suspecting Angelica has been drugged, although Daniele claims she’s just drunk.
Joe and Daria take Angelica home. Daria offers to stay with his daughter, but Joe sends her home, sad and apologetic. The next morning, Daria is back with Ragù Campidanese on toast, with pork sausage and fennel, to help Angelica recover. Ragù can represent its cook and its place of origin; it must surely have healing powers.
Joe is summoned to the police station, where Lara has had a breakthrough following a phone call from Walt Elward in California, concerning his former wife’s birthmark. Let me attempt to explain this, point by point, based on the mind-boggling summary Joe and Lara give to Conti:
- Elward’s email address is his (partial) name spelled backward. His wife had a birthmark, but the body did not. So the dead woman is neither Glenda nor Valerie, which is why she wore the mask.
- Stefan claims Mitrea and Lizzie were lovers.
- The gardener said Lizzie Andrews spoke with an accent. Andrews is almost the same as Andrei. “It’s like a Ragù. You change the name to explain where it comes from.” (Thanks, Joe).
- Lizzie Andrews, aka Elizabeth Andrei, aka Elizabetta, is Stefan’s mother.
- The DNA results prove Stefan Andrei is the son of the dead woman; therefore, the body is Lizzie.
It’s back to the villa for Joe, Lara, and Conti. Stefan is busy trying to kill Dr. Mitrea, whom he blames for his mum’s death. Joe explains that even though the doctor was there the day of her death, she died from natural causes. Stefan disagrees. Reluctantly, Stefan surrenders the ginormous knife he’s been holding to Dr. Mitrea’s throat.
Stefan knew atropine in the eyedrops had been used to kill Glenda and broke into Dr. Mitrea’s hotel room to find it in his medical supplies. Glenda had a $10m settlement, most of which was moved to Romanian bank accounts, one of which was in Stefan’s name. Mitrea performed some plastic surgery tidy-up on Lizzie, so she looked like Glenda. The US EmbasU.S. renewed Glenda’s passport using Lizzie’s photo. However, Lizzie resented spending 30 years disguised as Glenda. (Well, who wouldn’t?)
Stefan suspected Mitrea of murdering Lizzie because she’d told Stefan Mitrea had squandered his share of the money. Stefan assumed Mitrea had killed her to get back the €2m mentioned in her will. (Stefan was apparently delusional. How would we tell?) He also found Dr. Mitrea was at the villa when Lizzie died. Stefan risked incriminating himself by going to the police. Gianni returns to announce that yes indeed, Glenda’s body has been found in a shallow grave in that lovely cloistered garden.
(At this point, Conti abruptly leaves the room, possibly to clear his head.)
Meanwhile, Daniele is in jail, and drug tests prove that Angelica was drugged. Lara makes Joe an offer—Daniele can be prosecuted, but he could make a deal to help bring down Di Biasi—finally, a real moral dilemma.
A Taste for Murder Season 1 concludes on Tuesday, May 5, 2026.
A Taste for Murder
