VITA E PENSIERO MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION IN ITALY: HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES FAUSTO COLOMBO (ED.) Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero © 2019 Vita e Pensiero – Largo Gemelli 1 – 20123 Milano www.vitaepensiero.it ISBN Ebook (PDF) 978-88-343-4007-3 Graphic design: Andrea Musso This E-book is protected by copyright and may not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, rented, licensed or transmitted in public, or used in any other way except as it has been authorized by the publisher, the terms and conditions to which it was purchased, or as expressly required by applicable law. Any unauthorized use or distribution of this text as well as the alteration of electronic rights management information is a violation of the rights of the publisher and of the author and will be sanctioned according to the provisions of Law 633/1941 and subsequent amendments. Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero This volume is supported by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and published with the contribution of the Department of Communication and Performing Arts. INDEX FAUSTO COLOMBO 6 I. Theory and history CLAUDIO BERNARDI Political revolutions and cultural revolutions (1900-1945) 16 RUGGERO EUGENI Cinema: theoretical discourses 31 PIERMARCO AROLDI Children’s media and the development of the child audience (1900-1975) 46 FAUSTO COLOMBO The cultural industry of Italy in the first phase of the Republic 56 ALDO GRASSO The long road to post-mediality. The Italian media system from 1979 to 2012 77 MASSIMO SCAGLIONI A change of season. The demise of political cultures and triumph of “television neo-culture” 85 CHIARA GIACCARDI Globalisation is tiring us out. Countertrends and new geographies in the age of convergence 94 SILVANO PETROSINO So close, so far. A short discussion about the concept of “distance” in the digital age 105 Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero Introduction 4 INDEX ARMANDO FUMAGALLI - PAOLO BRAGA Italian scripted television: generalist appeal and international market access 113 II. The media Theatre LAURA PEJA Theatre: inside and out (1945-1978) 125 From the arts to performance in Europe, the United States and Italy in the second half of the Twentieth century 141 CARLA BINO Memory, community and encounter. Sacred theatre in Italy (1998-2018) 149 Cinema MASSIMO LOCATELLI The cultural interface. Cinema and the media in Italy 165 MARIAGRAZIA FANCHI Feminine spectrum. Notes for a history of Italian women at the movies 178 Radio PAOLA ABBIEZZI Lightness, propaganda and liberty. Italian radio from its origins to the mid-Seventies 189 SIMONE CARLO From beat to bytes: the evolution of radio from 1978 to 2012 201 Television ALDO GRASSO - CECILIA PENATI Italian television: origins to modernity. Multiple threads in a patchwork history (1954-2012) 213 MASSIMO SCAGLIONI - ANNA SFARDINI Television genres, from “paleo-” to “neo-television” 228 Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero ROBERTA CARPANI 5 INDEX Digital media FRANCESCA PASQUALI - BARBARA SCIFO - NICOLETTA VITTADINI From modems to social media and from mobiles to smartphones. The history of digital communications in Italy 241 MATTEO TARANTINO - SIMONE TOSONI Playing in the Grey Zone. The development of the Italian video game industry 256 Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero ARMANDO FUMAGALLI - PAOLO BRAGA Italian scripted television: generalist appeal and international market access 1 Changes already partly described by L. Barra, The Italian Job, in “Link”, 21, June 2017, pp. 242249. Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero Italian scripted television, defined using the Anglicism “fiction”, is currently undergoing an important period of transition. After almost twenty years – from the late Nineties to midway through this decade – of general stability in terms of production models, formats and target markets, new energy is bubbling up and major change is on the horizon1. But let us begin with a premise: what kind of television are we talking about when we use the term Italian TV fiction? First things first: we need to point out a distinction that to some will seem obvious, but is perhaps not given due consideration in the debates about television series in Italy. We are talking about the profound differences in terms of market, strategy and business model between making television series (as well as TV movies; let us use the term fiction generally) for the generalist, free-to-air networks, and making them for the pay-TV networks. The series made for “generalist” channels, namely the free-to-air networks, have to cater to a very broad audience, as the viewing figures corroborate: 11 million for Montalbano, 7-8 million for Don Matteo, and an approximate average of 7 million for the first season of the TV series Medici, Masters of Florence and Maltese. The American equivalents, as we know, are or were (since some have now ended): CSI, The Good Wife, NCIS, Person of Interest, The Mentalist, Grey’s Anatomy, This is Us and, among the comedies, Big Bang Theory; series achieving audience figures of 10 or more millions, occasionally or in certain seasons even 20 million. On the other hand, we have the series that air on pay-TV networks, commonly known as “cable” in the United States (because the signal is transmitted via cable, and today also via the internet thanks to Netflix and Amazon). In Italy, until today they only included those produced by Sky (such as Romanzo criminale, Gomorra, The Young Pope and I delitti del BarLume, and, much earlier, Boris for Fox) with some produced by the Disney Channel, such as Alex & Co. A passing note: such children’s television products are hardly ever mentioned despite being one of the Italian industry’s interesting assets. Just to make some examples, they range from sketch comedies like Quelli dell’intervallo to series like Violetta – produced by an Italian female Disney producer –, Alex & Co. and Penny on Mars, which are major international successes within this target audience. 114 ARMANDO FUMAGALLI - PAOLO BRAGA 1. Different models, different rules The fact that audience figures, even just in terms of targets, vary greatly, imposes very different rules on the series itself, and, therefore on the guidelines for planning, developing and producing it. For example, having to target only niche au- 2 For an exhaustive study of Sky’s system for scripted television production, and its innovative contribution to the Italian television panorama, see M. Scaglioni - L. Barra (eds.), Tutta un’altra fiction. La serialità pay, in Italia e nel mondo. Il modello Sky, Carocci, Rome 2013. 3 The article by Luca Barra cited above (The Italian Job) refers to a statement by Richard Plepler, CEO of HBO, according to which the question to ask whenever a series is broadcast is not how many people will watch it, but whether “this program will elevate our brand”. Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero Like in the USA, Italy’s pay-TV series are, in certain ways, the most innovative, but almost always more niche: best known examples include Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Dexter, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Orange is the New Black, Westworld and Thirteen Reasons Why. “Cable” series (including Netflix and Amazon), however, are based on a profoundly different business model from series for generalist television channels2. While the latter must target as wide an audience as possible in order to generate revenue for the channels that broadcast them, due to the adverts shown in the breaks, pay-TV series do not generate profit based on the number of viewers watching a certain show at a certain time; rather their value lies in the status they convey by association in the minds of the public i.e. their “perceived importance”, which convinces a user to take up (or renew) a subscription with the channel or platform, so that they don’t feel “out of the loop” and will not miss the TV show that everyone (or what seems like everyone) is talking about, possibly because of ample coverage in the press and in the news. So, if I produce a series for Rai 1 or Canale 5 in Italy (likewise for CBS, NBC, Fox or ABC in America), I have to make it in such a way that it will draw as wide an audience as possible, ideally at least 4 or 5 million to satisfy the commissioning and broadcasting channels. If I produce a TV series for Sky in Italy (or for HBO, Netflix, Amazon, AMC, Showtime or Starz in America), the most important thing is that people talk about it, and that it is “perceived” in such a way that it becomes an important factor for those users who will be renewing their subscriptions in a few months3. This means I can be satisfied with a few hundred thousand viewers. This is why, since its launch in the Seventies, HBO – and all similar networks launched in its wake, like Sky in Italy – invests far more in terms of advertising and public relations in single products than generalist networks do. They have to convince everyone (first and foremost the journalists and gatekeepers of information) that the series is an “essential” viewing not to be missed. Whether people then watch in high or low numbers is (relatively, or at least in the immediate term) a secondary goal. ITALIAN SCRIPTED TELEVISION 115 4 These aspects were addressed in the recent publication by P. Braga - G. Cavazza - A. Fumagalli, The Dark Side. Bad guys, antagonisti e antieroi del cinema e della serialità contemporanea, Dino Audino, Rome 2016; on this topic, see also P. Braga - A. Fumagalli, La malinconia del multistrand. L’evoluzione narrativa del telefilm, in Link. Focus. Speciale dedicato all’industria, allo sfruttamento, al consumo delle serie TV, RTI, Milan 2007, pp. 195-200. 5 This further proves that in Italy fiction and its protagonists play a similar role, in terms of popularity and the social function of the narrative, to Hollywood cinema in America. On this, a few issues are raised in Chapter 4 of A. Fumagalli, Creatività al potere. Da Hollywood alla Pixar passando per l’Italia, Lindau, Turin 2013. Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero diences permits the creation of very dark characters, not only and not primarily through incursions into the world of crime, but above all through edgier stories and a deep sense of extreme existential dissatisfaction: themes that certainly lack mass appeal4. As regards Italian fiction for a broader audience, a factor generally overlooked is its high penetration in terms of national audience figures. If we adjusted the audience share achieved by Montalbano to account for the number of inhabitants in the United States, the equivalent figure would be 60 million viewers per episode, and over 40 million for Don Matteo: absolutely unprecedented figures for an American product. Certainly, the market there is different, less clean cut and much more complex, but, following an unjustified inferiority complex that sometimes afflicts Italians, we forget that few other countries in the world with a varied and free market have achieved such high viewing figures for TV fiction products aired on national public television5. In recent years, RAI has managed to dominate in this area: with no drastic makeover, it has discreetly but significantly renovated the genre in terms of style and theme, the fruits of which were particularly evident in recent seasons: in 2016-2017, for example, Rai 1’s average audience share for fiction was 25% (nearly six points higher than the average for all evenings on the network, standing at 19.5% across the board). This success goes beyond audience figures: under the leadership of Eleonora (or Tinny, as she is known) Andreatta, RAI Fiction – RAI’s TV series production branch – has also managed to make highly innovative contributions (La mafia uccide solo d’estate, Rocco Schiavone, La porta rossa, above all) maintaining a strong degree of thematic and narrative continuity so as not to disorientate the public. It created fiction products for its minor channels, Rai 2 and Rai 3; and also launched a number of series (Non uccidere 2) on the internet. Essentially, it really managed to cover many different targets. In autumn 2018, came the hit collaboration with HBO on L’amica geniale (Engl. title My Brilliant Friend): eight one-hour episodes filmed in Neapolitan dialect and broadcast with subtitles, even in Italy. The series, based on a hugely successful series of novels – both in Italy and worldwide, particularly in English-speaking countries – was also preceded by a major publicity campaign. Yet another big win, with a share of around 30%, drawing audiences of approximately 7 million on average. Besides all this, in recent years, RAI has continued to produce a number of miniseries and TV movies on themes of great social importance. A perfect example is the “wave” of TV movies and miniseries starring Beppe Fiorello, 116 ARMANDO FUMAGALLI - PAOLO BRAGA 6 See L. Cotta Ramosino, Distretto di polizia. Dalla serialità americana a quella italiana: storia e analisi di un genere e di una serie di successo, Dino Audino, Rome 2010. Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero taking on a number of public heroes and social issues over recent years, always with positive audience responses: Il sorteggio (2010), Sarò sempre tuo padre (2011), the huge hit that was Volare (2013), L’angelo di Sarajevo (2015), Io non mi arrendo (2016) and the recent I fantasmi di Portopalo, broadcast in the early months of 2017, in which, once again, the Sicilian actor successfully portrays a “normal” hero. This two-episode miniseries managed to address the hot topic of immigration and illegal immigrant landings while furnishing the story with a sense of truth and succeeding to engage a mass audience in reflecting on a burning social issue from a human and civil perspective – exactly what the public service should be doing. Fiction produced by Mediaset – the commercial broadcaster which is RAI main competitor – stood up well the competition with RAI until the end of the first decade of the new century, but suffered majorly as the competitive arena changed. During the first years of the 2000s, Canale 5 – the main channel owned by Mediaset – attempted to beat RAI at its own game, delivering firstrate sagas that matched the genres of those being broadcast by the public service network (important historical-political figures such as Borsellino, a judge killed by the Mafia, adaptations of great novels such as Cuore, religious mini-series such as Padre Pio and Karol), and achieving audience figures of over 10 million. In the following years, Mediaset gradually became more focused on a number of very specific genres: e.g. investigative “mafia” crime dramas and heightened melodramas (Alberto Tarallo’s productions, often starring Gabriel Garko: L’onore e il rispetto, Il peccato e la vergogna); family shows like for example I Cesaroni (a very “Italianised” adaptation of the Spanish series Los Serrano) which started out as modern, but lost momentum and direction. At the same time, some flagship Canale 5 series started to decline, renouncing to their original quality standards. It is the case of the crime drama Distretto di polizia (2000-2012), produced by Taodue for Canale 5, which had initially achieved the perfect “mix” in terms of Italianising an originally American format during its first golden years; however, it gradually became harsher in tone, veering towards the darker styles and heroes typical of American series and fatally losing its appeal with Italian audiences as a result. The ensemble cast format with interweaving self-contained stories and story arcs, modelled on NYPD Blue and similar American products, had been, in fact, strongly Italianised in the first, successful seasons of Distretto, with additional comedic elements and, above all, sympathetic characters such as those interpreted by Giorgio Tirabassi and Ricky Memphis. In other words, Distretto had achieved (thanks to the definitive formatting work on third season conducted by Daniele Cesarano, longterm screenwriter and now head of production at Mediaset) a balanced mix of modern and traditional, crime and comedy, which met the tastes of the Italian audience head on6. An equilibrium that was gradually lost as later, “pur- ITALIAN SCRIPTED TELEVISION 117 7 Among other things, according to the RAI report presented on March 1 2017 by the CEO Antonio Campo Dall’Orto and the Director of Rai Fiction Eleonora Andreatta in a meeting with the television producers, Don Matteo is the scripted show with by far the best cost-audience ratio, across all genres, with an index of 1.35 compared to the average of 2.16 for long-running RAI series. Indeed, miniseries have a far less favourable average index of 2.91 (compared to Don Matteo, they cost more than double for the same number of viewers). Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero er” and more violent crime dramas emerged – almost all produced by Taodue, which presided over the genre – with a harsher and, therefore, less widely popular approach. And so, whilst certain long-running Mediaset franchises have run their course (Distretto di polizia, RIS, I Cesaroni) and ended with diminishing audiences, RAI has been able to continually renew its main titles thanks to careful ongoing development. The most significant example of this practice is, without a doubt, Don Matteo (2000 - in production), a title often unjustly snubbed by critics. There are a number of factors behind the fact this show pulls in an average of over 7.5 million viewers per night after 18 years7: one of these is that beneath the surface of the show’s endurance, and that of its main protagonist, the series has undergone significant growth and a remarkable transformation. If you compare the first season (2000) with one of the more recent ones, you will notice that the scenes are much shorter and more compact, the pace is faster, there is far more comedy, there are story arcs that were missing in the first seasons, the number of regular characters involved in these storylines has doubled or tripled, specific plotlines have been added to appeal to a teenage audience (which has, in fact, significantly increased over the last two seasons), there are romantic storylines etc. Indeed, the successes of Rai 1’s fiction are part of a virtuous circle between the identity of a network and its most highly-prized product. On the one hand, in fact, fiction has enhanced the perception that viewers have of the broadcaster, feeding into their experience of a public service channel charged with the task of developing the country’s collective narrative around important personalities and events. On the other hand, the network’s mission, its efforts to ensure its varied offering does not sully the institutional image it has developed historically; this means that the show schedule has become the ideal platform for guiding the interests and, therefore, expectations of audiences towards quality television products; products that, to a greater or lesser degree, contribute to set the public agenda. The fundamental importance its programming has in supporting the network is most apparent if we consider an example to the contrary: Mediaset fiction in recent years. Indeed, the declining fortunes of Canale 5 productions are also due to the watering down of its general editorial policy, giving rise to products that lack integrity and rely on easy emotions. Canale 5 gradually associated itself with reality television, being the network of Big Brother; forays into trash TV, with Ciao Darwin; and sensational melodramas – those with Garko mentioned above – eroding the taste and expectations of the audience. In this 118 ARMANDO FUMAGALLI - PAOLO BRAGA Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero way, it deprived itself of that bedrock of expectations that would give appropriate prominence to titles of “more substance”, those with the actual potential to attract a broader, wide-ranging audience. When, for example, Mediaset fiction unsuccessfully tried to turn back time with shows of this type – e.g. Romeo e Giulietta (Canale 5, 2014) – their unsatisfactory audience reception was influenced by the fact that, in the eyes of an audience that had, by now, become accustomed to rather “coarser” tastes, this kind of story appeared out of place on Canale 5. It should also be added that the network’s “popular” approach, in the worst sense of the term, even contaminated the inspiration for its fiction products, which were often conceived to reflect it: sequels to over-used concepts, with the only hook being romantic intrigue, such as Il bello delle donne… alcuni anni dopo... (Canale 5, 2017), or superficial comedies that trivialise family strife presenting it with rather infantile humour, such as in Matrimoni e altre follie (Canale 5, 2016). It must not be overlooked that all this has had repercussions not only “downstream”, i.e. on the response of the audience to fiction products, which has become more and more diluted, but also “upstream”, i.e. on the industry, by discouraging the best authors from presenting more sophisticated narrative ideas. Comparing Mediaset and RAI presents a good opportunity to reiterate that automatically assuming the difference between generalist Italian fiction and pay-TV fiction as an absence of quality on the one hand (generalist television), and so-called “quality television”, on the other (Sky) is, in our opinion, a rather simplistic approach. Suffice to consider some examples of RAI’s hit shows to realize that products are moulded carefully throughout the whole process to become “successful”. Brand new series, such as Sotto Copertura (Rai 1, 2015 and then 2017) or La strada di casa (Rai 1, 2017), but also every new season of long-running series such as Don Matteo, are presented to the audience at the end of a process in which each of the stages of production has been duly evaluated. Firstly, you need to conceive and develop a concept (general plot outline, genre and themes) with audience appeal. Then, you need a flawless, compact script that plays well on elements of conflict, has a sense of verisimilitude and brings out the emotional dimensions of the plot. Then comes the production, beginning with excellent casting. This is not necessarily important in terms of how well-known the actors are, especially for long-running series: consider, to cite a Mediaset example, the success of Elisa di Rivombrosa (Canale 5, 2003-2005) and its then unknown stars Alessandro Preziosi and Vittoria Puccini, who after that series went on to enjoy long and distinguished careers). Instead, what matters are the actors’ abilities and how well their face/persona suits the character they are playing. Of course, along the process, you also need a director who supports the story and enhances its most emotionally powerful points, with cinematography, location and production design that all support the perception of a congruent whole. Finally, we have post-production (editing and music, mainly) to create the final product, which is then given a proper launch, and suitably programmed i.e. avoiding any suicidal schedule clashes. So, all of ITALIAN SCRIPTED TELEVISION 119 2. Toward new formats Another “unique” feature of the last twenty years of Italian production has been the ample use (especially by RAI) of the two-episode miniseries format. A format that allowed the story to be more drawn out (two episodes of 100 minutes each), which, with more time to flesh out the content, and – if you like, an occasionally more didactic approach – facilitated a broader, more expansive narrative. Moreover, spreading the programming over two evenings made it possible to accumulate more viewers between the first and second evening (the second episode of almost all successful miniseries drew significantly more viewers than the first). This is a format that gave rise to huge successes in Italian fiction television: Papa Giovanni XXIII (with more than a 50% audience share for the second episode on Rai 1); Perlasca, Giovanni Paolo II and, more recently, the aforementioned biopic on Modugno, Volare, and many other miniseries (often on historical or religious characters: Padre Pio, Madre Teresa, Enrico Mattei, Olivetti, De Gasperi) for which the viewing figures were huge, including those produced by Mediaset. Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero this creates quality: a similar degree of care to that applied when packaging pay-TV series, just targeted differently. Also, lingering on the screenwriting phase, it seems appropriate to speak in terms of the different qualitative aspects that generalist and pay-TV focus on, to achieve different goals. For example, on various occasions the RAI tradition has demonstrated its ability, within its stories, to distinguish between and successfully interweave, on the one hand, issues related to the subject matter (historical data about the characters or real facts presented in the story; the extra-textual hook for the general public) and, on the other, issues related to the theme (the human message, values that can be explored through this historical character; the moral dilemma that he/she faces and that makes them engaging). Consider the way in which Coco Chanel (Rai 1, 2008), through the figure of the French designer, focused on the question of how important the expectations of others are in finding self-acceptance; or the way in which Sant’Agostino (Rai 1, 2009), which narrated the life of the saint, addressed the limits of persuasion, reflecting on the evocative power of the word and that of conviction about the “true” truth. Sky, on the other hand, having decided to focus on the anti-hero, has refined the appropriate narrative and rhetorical techniques to emotionally bond the audience with controversial or negative characters. Hence the use of an anti-State stance and depiction of corrupt services to cast the actions of Romanzo Criminale’s Magliana gang members in a comparatively acceptable light; hence, too, in the pilot episode of Gomorra, the character of Ciro di Marzio is on the point of denouncing the boss to the police – a small spark to appeal to the more natural inclinations of the audience, before sucking them into a vortex of degradation and homicidal violence. 120 ARMANDO FUMAGALLI - PAOLO BRAGA 3. Towards the international market The big change came with the entry of Italian productions into the large international TV series market; a recent development but no less significant, causing much excitement, particularly among the main production companies. This means designing international projects, filming (almost always) in English, attempting to attract global stars and obviously also working with higher budgets. After Gomorra, in autumn 2016, two series went on air that represented, in some way, a paradigm of the two narrative and productive models outlined at the beginning of the article: I Medici on Rai 1 and The Young Pope on Sky. Audience figures varied greatly (approximately one million for Sorrentino’s The Young Pope before gradually falling, and a little less than 7 million for the first season of I Medici), as did, from the outset, the planning, style and narrative approach: one for an “artistic”, niche public and one for large swathes of the general audience. Even the production history differs in part: on the one hand, we have Sorrentino on board, fresh from his Oscar win, and the co-production deal with HBO; on the other hand, we have the development from a concept, the support of RAI, the involvement of a very experienced American showrunner like Frank Spotnitz (The X Files, The Man in the High Castle), 8 The decision regarding project formats goes back to late 2016: indeed, some miniseries conceived and filmed earlier were still aired in 2017. As we know, the cycle from planning to airing is about two years, if not more (this obviously also depends on whether we are talking about a TV movie or a long series). Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero The miniseries format, primarily for better compatibility with the industrial system and with foreign markets, was abandoned by Mediaset first, and then, from the end of 2016, on the specific orders of the then CEO Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, by RAI as well8. Mediaset recently made an exception for Chiamatemi Francesco, a project with a different productive history, conceived for cinema and of which the two-part television version (Francesco, il Papa della gente, Canale 5, 2016) was a sort of re-release, albeit planned from the outset. With the new CEO of RAI, this approach was generally maintained, keeping the focus on miniseries of eight (or 10 or 12) one-hour episodes i.e. four-six evenings of Italian television – again, a more American and international model, like True Detective or The Crown –; or also of four or six 100-minute episodes, in order to optimize investments and make the product more marketable abroad (for example two cases that aired on Rai 1 are I bastardi di Pizzofalcone and Sorelle). Another model, infrequently used but nonetheless effective when it has good characters, is the TV movie franchise (a series with episodes consisting each one in a separate TV movie featuring the same characters) e.g Montalbano (and its spin-off Il Giovane Montalbano), which was the most successful Italian fiction product of the last two decades; the format was also used by Sky, with I delitti del BarLume. ITALIAN SCRIPTED TELEVISION 121 9 For the purposes of comparison, an average-length or long Italian series costs approximately 500,000 euro per hour of content (in recent years, RAI has sometimes paid slightly more, Mediaset sometimes slightly less). An Italian miniseries of two 100-minute episode each does not exceed, except in unusual circumstances, 3.5 or 4 million euro (so about 1 million per hour). 10 There are of course exceptions: Netflix, for example, whether with The Crown, Stranger Things or Chiamatemi Anne (a new adaptation of the classic Anne of Green Gables) has successfully tested Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero a deal with an international partner (the French cinema distribution company Wild Bunch) and finally (with the series completed) the agreement with Netflix that acquired the finished product for a number of important territories (USA, UK and India, among others), complete with the “Netflix Original” brand seal of approval. Nevertheless, despite these large differences in terms of narrative, target and style, the two series marked the – hopefully definitive – entry of Italian productions in the international TV series market (the budget was 25 million for I Medici and 40 for The Young Pope9): both were sold in several countries worldwide. It therefore seems the doors are now thrown open. In October 2017, Netflix distributed Suburra; in autumn 2018 the RAIHBO-TimVision coproduction L‘amica geniale aired, as we have said, with great success. RAI even has produced, with Matteo Levi’s 11 Marzo Film, Palomar and international partners, The Name of the Rose which has been already broadcast in Italy (without great success); a series about Leonardo da Vinci is currently being written (Lux Vide) and planned as a joint production between three large European public networks (RAI, France 2 and ARD); and the series I Beati Paoli, directed by Tornatore is also in production with Leone Film Group. Cattleya, the production company behind Suburra and Gomorra, is developing many other international projects and has many requests from different clients. The company, headed by Riccardo Tozzi, has been for years one of the main producers of national cinema. Given the current difficulties facing Italian cinema, it has decided to divert a large proportion of its activities towards television. The main problem with such co-productions, however, in our opinion, is that it is not at all easy for one product to have both significant success with Italian audiences and great appeal on the international market. Whilst the production process is clear enough (a production house supported by a network outlines the project and seeks partners on the market), the real issues concern narrative technique and the quality and tone of the stories. It is no coincidence that various projects (those mentioned and others that are still in the early development phase) have undergone very long, conflict-ridden processes in the development of characters and scripts, and that some were then abandoned. The point is that the narrative approaches that have become established on an international level, thanks to the influence of the American cable series, involve complex characters deeply flawed10, which strongly attract 122 ARMANDO FUMAGALLI - PAOLO BRAGA out – or at least, so it seems (as we know, they do not publish viewing figures) – different narrative approaches. 11 See H.C. Cuciniello, Downton Abbey by the Numbers: Farewell to a Multimilion-Dollar Dynasty, in “Forbes”, 6 March 2016. Acquistato da armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it su VitaPensiero_store il 2019-09-22 12:00 Numero Ordine Libreria: 201201900061279 Copyright © 2019, Vita e Pensiero authors in Italy and across Europe. The worldwide success of a lighter and more positive series such as Downton Abbey, which drew high or extremely high audience numbers in many countries worldwide (in the US, for example, it has broken all PBS audience records, on multiple occasions exceeding 13 million viewers on a channel that usually has 211) does not seem, as yet, to have shifted the dominant mood, particularly among industry professionals and buyers, who continue to be drawn mainly to crime and stories of a gloomier nature. But this kind of narrative has far less success with Italian and other European audiences (it would be interesting to explore, for example, how much the recent but truly remarkable international success of the Turkish TV series stems from a very different thematic and emotional approach). So, while collaborations with Netflix or HBO may find it easy to get the green light for projects with a narrative approach similar to those of “cable” series, it is by no means guaranteed that these kind of shows will be particularly well received on the generalist networks, at least in Italy. In this sense, the success of the Medici and of Amica Geniale (which, in any case, had relatively low viewing figures on HBO) suggests a possible, albeit narrow degree of compatibility between the two dimensions. Provided of course that the Italian partners are able to make their mark and take the national audience into consideration, rather than simply trying to please partners or future buyers, or copying the stylistic characteristics and atmospheres that they love, but that receive a cooler reception from the general audience.