lauranoncrede:

*main reference being network shows

• they’re expensive but lucrative. tptb invest way more on tv shows (here called “fictions”) than on movies, but they’re never disappointed. especially if they’re period dramas, they’ll look lavish and rarely flop.
• they’re averagely bad. conceived for audiences that are either uneducated or presumed to be so, they usually feature cringe-worthy plots and dialogue. when they happen to be good, the press will go in shock and never recover.
• they take forever to be made. you liked your show? if you’re lucky you’ll see it again in two years and you probably won’t know it until its production kicks. i’m not sure why it can take that long, but it probably has to do with bureaucracy and negotiations with the cast
• they also last forever. if they do well, nothing will stop them. the protagonist wants out? they’ll do a next generation. recasting needed? sure. but that character was the doctor mentioned in the title?? they’ll get another doctor, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down……..
• their main theme is always the same. “fictions” usually centre around families (the bigger, the better), doctors, priests/nuns and mysteries or families of doctors and priests/nuns involved in mysteries. berlusconi-owned canale 5 sometimes varies with harlequin-style pseudo-crime stories where ridiculously handsome actors alternatively have sex and shoot people for hours. old-fashioned values such as love, family and tradition will always prevail.
• they’re so bad there was a show about how bad they are. the little gem that is fox-produced boris was a sit com about a cast and crew at work on one of these ‘families of doctors involved in mysteries’ shows. it highlighted all the dirt behind it, including corrupt and politically influenced producers, lazy screenwriters, bad actors and an iconic deeply frustrated director.
• no young italian will admit to watching any. usually because they actually don’t, but even when they do they’ll pretend otherwise. because network audience is old and (as mentioned) assumed to be poorly educated, they’ll gravitate towards cable and/or foreign shows or watch nothing at all instead. still, if they’re actually tuning in they won’t want to be told they like garbage.
• episodes are long. a primetime show will air from about 9:30pm to about 11pm. this means we either get movie-long episodes (the montalbano mysteries) or two eps per week, in any case we’ll watch almost two hours of our shows in one night.
• actual italians don’t speak like that. while the italian network tv sometimes allows swearing, the characters will still talk in a painfully unlikely way. they have no accent unless they function as comic relief and their lines will often be emphatic or heavy with pointless exposition. in the past few years they also began to sound like they were translated from english, which they probably were if the screenwriters watch too many foreign shows and just swallow everything. an example would be the expression “sono così eccitat*”, literal translation of “i’m so excited” that almost dosn’t exist in everyday italian unless you’re a porn star or something. actor pietro sermonti once called this weird language italiese. on the bright side, cable shows luckily avoid this garbage; but they still tend to only do it when the specific regional variation is something of a plot point (neapolitan/roman crime will be involved and so on).
• the times, they are a-changin’. younger screenwriters are now working and some changes are being made. a few shows from the past years are or have been actually pretty good, although most people won’t admit it due to the cultural stigma attached to rai or, in rare cases, mediaset. still, even the oldest church-going audiences are getting acquainted with librated women, lgbt couples and morally gray characters. i guess we’ll see where that goes.
• this had no point at all whatsoever.