Who is Marcello in Harry Wild?

Four series in, Harry Wild finally produces the man responsible for Charlie Wild existing. He does not arrive quietly, and he does not arrive alone.

Marcello is played by Italian actor Edoardo Costa — previously of the soap Vivere, Baywatch, and The Bold and the Beautiful — and appears in four episodes of series 4, which ran on Acorn TV from 5 May 2025 and reached UK terrestrial audiences via U&Drama in spring 2026. He is Charlie's father: Harry's long-departed Italian ex, the man who left her broke, pregnant, and teaching literature in Dublin.

The short version of who he is

Jane Seymour described him to TV Drama Weekly in 2025 as a man who turns up dead and then turns out to be "not quite so dead, and he is trouble." That is roughly the whole character.

Harry's own account, delivered in the series 4 finale "The Final Chapter", is longer and considerably less forgiving. He arrived, made her love him, got her pregnant, and left. He came back saying he had changed, so she took him in because he was Charlie's father, and he slept with her best friend. The third time he came back, he stole from her. None of which, she says, is the worst of it — the worst was watching her son watch his father leave, repeatedly.

She does eventually get round to calling him "a weak, pointless piece of DNA", which is the kind of line Seymour has clearly been waiting four series to deliver.

The funeral problem

Marcello's visits to Dublin run at roughly one a decade. This one opens with his funeral, which he attends, alive, to the surprise of the mourners.

The faked death is not a prank. He owes money to an Italian gangster called Donato Abruzzo, played by Roberto Davide, and has compounded the debt by stealing a necklace belonging to Abruzzo's grandmother. Abruzzo, a man with firm views on family, follows him to Ireland to get it back. Harry ends up negotiating for her ex-husband's life, a scene Seymour singled out when she spoke to GBH in 2025, saying she had to "negotiate to save his life" and enjoyed every second of it.

Why Charlie can barely look at him

The show gives father and son one very good exchange, in which Charlie thanks Marcello for the missed birthdays and forgotten Christmases on the grounds that they made him the man he is. Marcello agrees, and adds that had he been around, Charlie would only have tried to emulate him — because he is, as he sees it, extremely charismatic.

Detective Inspector Charlie Wild spends four series being exasperated by one parent. Series 4 introduces the other one, and recalibrates the whole complaint.

Where to find him

Marcello appears in the back four episodes of series 4:

Read more: Harry Wild season 6 release date: what's confirmed since season 5 wrapped in July

• "Hold Your Horses, We've a Killer to Catch" — 12 May 2025, alongside the sabotaged racehorse case.
• "Murder on the Dance Floor" — 19 May 2025, the missing dancers at Genevieve Le Coeur's school.
• "The Death of Harry Wild" — 26 May 2025, in which Harry's doppelgänger is killed at a crime convention.
• "The Final Chapter" — 2 June 2025, the series finale.

Does he come back?

No. Series 5 premiered on Acorn TV on 22 June 2026 and finished on 27 July, six episodes covering whiskey distilleries, theatre, musical tattoos, a gang of middle-aged burglars, and a murder rather closer to home. Costa is not in the credits.

The new face instead is Joe Lando as state pathologist Pierce Kennedy — which, for anyone who spent the 1990s watching Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, makes Michaela Quinn and Byron Sully colleagues again after thirty years. Marcello, by contrast, has presumably gone back to owing somebody money somewhere warmer.

Earlier we wrote: Why did Gabriela leave Fire Country? Stephanie Arcila learned of it while filming the season 3 finale