Pietro Pulcini

Pulcini's screen career got its start in the mid-to-late 1990s, with an early credit in *La grande quercia* (1996) followed by *Il pesce innamorato* (1999) — both films connected to the Italian comedy circuit that was producing crowd-pleasing domestic hits at the time (IMDb). *Il principe e il pirata* (2001) added another early film credit, with Pulcini working alongside directors Leonardo Pieraccioni and Paolo Bianchini during what looks, in retrospect, like a productive early stretch of building a filmography one project at a time. The role that would define his public profile, though, was Brigadiere Pietro Ghisoni on *Don Matteo* — the long-running RAI series that became one of Italian television's most durable hits. Pulcini appeared across nearly the entire run of the show, skipping only the fourth season (Wikipedia). It's the sort of ensemble role that doesn't always get the critical attention it deserves: Ghisoni isn't the title character, but he's the connective tissue of the precinct scenes, and anyone who's watched more than a few episodes knows how much the show's rhythm depends on that supporting layer working. Pulcini made it work, season after season. From 2012 to 2014, he took a detour into a completely different register — serving as an on-set "disturber" and field reporter for *Le Iene*, the Italian investigative-comedy TV program, working alongside Nino Frassica (Wikipedia). It's a credit that doesn't fit neatly into the rest of his résumé, and that's probably the point. His career has stayed firmly rooted in Italian domestic production; he hasn't crossed over into international or Hollywood projects (Wikipedia), which, depending on how you look at it, is either a limitation or a sign that he's found exactly the audience he was looking for.