This feature spin-off from Francesco Da Mosto’s small-screen primers on Italian life documents the Targa Florio, formerly the world’s longest-running road race, deploying a double-pronged approach. The genial, silver-haired Da Mosto – more Rod Liddle than Clarkson – potters around the Sicilian villages the cars once hared through; his interviews are intercut with reconstructions centred on Vincenzo Florio, the race’s founder and Bernie Ecclestone of his day.
An early scene of Da Mosto and co-pilot Alain de Cadanet poring over the dashboard of a vintage Peugeot suggests it’s been compiled with specialist audiences in mind, but it stays lively, interrupting its archive material with trips to a Targa-themed model village and a self-appointed, somewhat self-aggrandising race cobbler.
Comparable characters and legends pop up out of the scrub on the route’s every bend. There’s a juicy anecdote about Enzo Ferrari, a baroness and a stuck lift, although it doesn’t turn out quite as you might imagine.
