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The TV of fiction

Brief overview of what we have seen, see and will see

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Italian fiction is the daughter of the dramas, taken from the great novels of literature, broadcast by Rai in the 60s/70s, to make the Italian people literate. Even the great theater was broadcast live on Fridays, after weeks of studio rehearsals, with the tracks on the ground, to facilitate the movements of the actors on stage.

The beauty of live broadcast”, in those years, gives us an episode that has long remained secret. Tino Carraro, a giant of the theater, stumbled on an injury: he forgot the lines to play. What is genius !? He began to move his mouth without emitting a sound, what in television jargon is called thefish effect”.

Millions of viewers began to turn the interchangeable volume, convinced that the television was broken; panic in the direction that aired the sign “We apologize for the interruption, the broadcasts will start as soon as possible”. In the break, Carraro ran towards the study assistant shouting: “A script, give me a script”.

Prose actors such as Tino Buazzelli, Ernesto Calindri, Nando Gazzolo, Rina Morelli, Andreina Pagnani and Valeria Valeri, just to mention names unknown to the youngest, today are not even seen on the horizon. So directors of the caliber of Sandro Bolchi or Anton Giulio Majano are light years away from today's directors, in terms of culture, lineage and charisma.

 
 
 
 
 
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Un post condiviso da Rai5 (@raicinque)

To quote a line from the movie “Argo”, Alan Arkin tells Ben Affleck: “Even a monkey learns to be a director in two days”. This is to say that the quality of Italian products, present on television, is for the most part poor. But as we will see later, the responsibilities do not lie on the shoulders of the actors and directors alone, who if they have a fault is that of lacking personality and charisma.

Under the name Fiction, several genres are declined and the directions of the various Networks have two tasks: to produce on their own and to buy from abroad. Sitcoms, Telenovelas and Series, mostly American, are bought: Crime, Legal and Medical.

Fiction is produced adapted to the target of the Network. RaiUno prefers the Catholic, familiar and reassuring aspect; RaiDue dares to experiment, closer to Crime. Canale5 bets almost everything on the mafia for the evening, while for the day time it relies on the familiar aspect; Italia1 is the kingdom of the American series.

The production difference between the American Series and the Italian Fiction is seriality. The first produces from eighteen to twenty-one episodes per season, the second from four to a maximum of seven. The first sells all over the world and this allows it to produce a very successful series for up to twenty years, exporting Spin Offs all over the world; while the Italian fiction is not even sold on the flea market and this allows it a limited production, with some exceptions that have nothing to do with the market.

The American Series are a real industry that rightly looks to profit, invests a lot to earn a lot, a lot more. Suffice it to note the investment they make in Photography alone, so much so that the various Skylines in Seattle, Chicago or New York become real paintings. Italian fiction is a patronage souk, where the logic of political affiliation, family sagas and small-scale cabotage are in force… I stop here for the love of Patria.

An example, if we can say so, of small coastal shipping is that of having created the Production Model”. This is nothing more than an expedient to save on production costs at the expense of product quality. Forcing directors, actors and workers to produce ten minutes of editing a day (at best) means drastically reducing rehearsal times, it means forcing less experienced directors to accept: “Good the first take!”

It imposes on the actors an acting made up of only soft breaths, those that simulate a coitus, so to speak! There are no more register changes but only monotonous ones. And then you say, “Damn bitch!” (by Boris)

With the advent of various platforms such as Netflix and Sky productions, things are improving a bit. New players have entered the market who have forced everyone to raise the bar in terms of quality.

Just “Boris”, broadcast on Sky, tells exactly, in a hilarious way, how the mechanism of Italian fiction works. It describes characters who are not stereotypes but correspond to reality; all that's missing is the description of that actor looking for any recommendations, even to be able to play at the Olympic Stadium “La partita del cuore”.

Everyone is expecting the next airing of this series, comparable to a jewel.