Days of Italian lives: Charting the contemporary soapscape on Italian public television

the italianist 29 · 2009 · 227-248

Days of Italian lives: Charting the contemporary soapscape on Italian public television

Giancarlo Lombardi

Soap opera viewers are often drawn to justify their television viewing habits as a guilty pleasure: by doing so, they demonstrate that they have internalized an ideology of mass culture that Ang Lee has argued is responsible for a stigma surrounding all forms of serial drama viewership.1 Indeed, soap operas have long been the target of harsh and dismissive criticism at the hands of those who consider them the lowest form of television.

However, influential scholars of television studies have successfully demonstrated that soap operas are a fertile terrain for engaging and innovative research. If popular culture is to be seen as the site of a struggle between conflicting discourses, soap operas should be viewed as a locus of intersection between local and global cultures, a place where archetypes and contemporary issues are mixed together, giving birth to complex narratives. In her ethnographic study of the viewing habits of South Asian teenagers growing up in London, Marie Gillespie analysed reactions to ‘sacred soaps’ imported from India and to the ‘western soaps’ regularly broadcast on British television, demonstrating how this particular diasporic group negotiated its culture and identity through its relation with two deeply diverse forms of serial drama.2 Already identified by Chris Barker in Global Television as one of two television genres with the widest global circulation,3 soap operas come to represent, through their ability to invoke hybridized and multilayered cultural identities, the ‘glocal’ television analysed by Joseph D. Strubhaar in a recent study of the world broadcasting system.4

It is because of their open serial nature that soap operas, as a genre, most closely refer to the very nature of television as a medium that thrives on ‘fidelization’; i.e., a medium that relies on a ‘customer’ who comes back day after day.5 Returning to the screen five times a week for whole decades, the competent soap spectator is the ideal television viewer: we should not forget that the real business of television is selling a captive audience to advertisers. After all, the commodification of viewership is embodied in the very name of this genre, soap (for soap powder) opera, recalling the origins of the genre in sponsored programming.

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Still, despite their fervent commitment to these shows, soap viewers (and television viewers in general) should not be considered as passive and acritical recipients of the ideological framework informing these programmes; if anything, soap viewers may be amongst the most critical and resistant ‘readers’ of popular culture. The internet has recently replaced specialized press (magazines such as Soap Opera Digest or Soap Opera Weekly) as the critical space where loyal viewers voice their resistance and often their dissatisfaction with the direction of their favourite shows: discussion boards dedicated to soap operas are filled with animated exchanges over storylines, cast changes, and inconsistencies in script-writing. Although it is hardly proven that head-writers and executive producers actually engage with these virtual forums, we need to reiterate our defence of an audience commonly defined as fundamentally passive, often seen in opposition to a more critical and demanding cinema audience. Equivalent denigration has often been reserved for scholarship in the wider field of television studies, perceived as less important than film studies, especially outside the English-speaking world: Italian, French, and German television, in particular, have long been neglected while the cinematic production of those European countries has always enjoyed large critical attention. What has gone unnoticed, however, is the profound influence that both media have had on one another, and in particular the role that cinematic conventions and codes have played in the television drama industry.

Soaps today

The glory days of a genre born in the United States first on the radio and subsequently on television are long gone, at least in its country of origin. After the O.J. Simpson trial (1995), televised live for months on all networks at a time soap operas were originally scheduled, millions of US viewers realized that they could live without daytime drama: audience numbers collapsed, and ratings have spiralled downwards ever since. Two of the most popular American soap operas provide an accurate portrayal of this trend: The Young and the Restless, which has dominated the daytime ratings for the past twenty years, has lost almost 30% of its viewers since 1995 (from 7,155,000 to 5,280,000), while during the same period General Hospital has lost 50% of its audience (from 5,343,000 to 2,687,000).6 However, while Latin America still continues to produce countless hours of serial drama (‘telenovelas’) successfully exported all over the world, Europe has recently enjoyed its own mediatic revolution as a result of EU laws mandating local production of a set amount of hours of television drama.7 Parallel to another initiative aimed at discouraging the incipient monopoly of American cinema on the European film circuit, such obligatory financing resurrected an industry that had fallen victim, during the 1980s, to the invasion of Dallas and its clones.

Lombardi · Charting the contemporary soapscape 229

A collaborative study headed by Alessandro Silj in 1988 attempted to take stock of the state of drama production in Western Europe in the days preceding the EU initiative. It concluded that in Italy, for example,

American imports, after years of indiscriminate pillaging by both RAI and the private networks, can no longer supply the Italian market as they used to, either as far as quantity is concerned (the demand far exceeds the supply), or from the standpoint of quality […] Until now the competition between RAI and the private networks on one hand, and between national programmes and imported ones on the other, has been fought mainly in primetime. Primetime means big budgets, popular actors, high (i.e. cinema) quality. That was phase one, the most aggressive one, because it is where audience ratings count most. But in the long run what will count, as in any war, is the broad front, that is, not only primetime but also the afternoon and early evening audience.8

At that time, Italian broadcasting was witnessing a slow resurgence of primetime drama production: even if each of its ten seasons never exceeded ten hours of programming per year, the unprecedented success of the serial La piovra exemplified the vibrancy of an industry which had long remained dormant. Still, the failure of the ironically titled Senza fine (1992), a primetime serial yanked off the air because of poor ratings, shelved for two years, and only re-aired at a later date in a non-competitive time-slot, clearly evidenced that successful long serialization remained alien to the Italian television industry.

An epochal change occurred much later, on October 21, 1996, the day in which RAI Tre launched Un posto al sole, its first soap opera. In the twelve years that followed, RAI and Mediaset have fully embarked on the adventure of long serialization: of the eight soaps created between 1996 to 2008, three still remain on the air, two on RAI Tre (Un posto al sole and Agrodolce) and one on Canale 5 (Centovetrine). The remaining five (Cuori rubati, Ricominciare, Sotto casa, and Incantesimo for RAI and Vivere for Mediaset) have been cancelled for different reasons, and in several cases their elimination has resulted more from poor institutional planning, which demanded immediate pay-off from a genre that traditionally requires a lengthy process of fidelization, than from the intrinsic quality of the serial.

This study analyses three different RAI soaps, in the attempt to identify their particular aspects, as they are ‘frozen’ in three different phases of their career: beginning, middle, and end. A synchronic cross-section of serial programming on Italian public television for the period I analyse (Summer 2008) includes, chronologically, the final episodes of Incantesimo (ended July 4), the episodes leading to the brief yearly hiatus of Un posto al sole (off air July 14), and the first two weeks of programming of Agrodolce (first aired September 8). In clear defiance


of the commonplace that defines soaps as a product always experienced in medias res,9 my critical reading of these programmes locates the discursive resistance to the brutal institutional interruption of a television show (Incantesimo); it singles out the textual practices that successfully maintain viewer loyalty to a programme which is about to be interrupted for a short period of time (Un posto al sole); and it points to the signposts placed at the inception of a new drama in order to foster audience identification and fidelization (Agrodolce). In my study, I have tried to overcome the difficulty of analysing texts known for boundless duration by mixing synchronic and diachronic approaches, and reference to a specific group of episodes is combined with a discussion of the history of Incantesimo and Un posto al sole in the attempt to provide contextualization for the textual analysis. Similarly, my decision not to analyse Mediaset soaps is due to my desire to concentrate on products united by a common institutional discourse that does not solely rest on commercial concerns. Although still linked to an economy that demands significant revenues, RAI soaps are also asked to obey, like all public broadcasting, the historical motto of its institution: informare, educare, intrattenere.

A borrowed genre: terms and definitions

At the intertextual level, each of the three soap operas considered here calls forth a different set of generic coordinates: Incantesimo distinctly recalls the traditional world of American soaps, Un posto al sole needs to be seen as product of the ‘glocal’ encounter between British ‘real drama’ and the commedia all’italiana, and Agrodolce should be interpreted through the polymorphic tradition of the ‘romanzo popolare’. Melodrama, realism, comedy and the popular novel are indeed the ingredients of most soap operas worldwide, although each national tradition of serial drama has mixed these elements in different proportions. The term ‘soap opera’, which I will use throughout the entire essay, has long included different forms of long serialization that, for clarity’s sake, I will now attempt to distinguish.

The bona fide ‘soap opera’ is essentially an American product, exclusively broadcast on ‘daytime’ (shortly before, or immediately after lunch time) five days a week, following a scheduling practice that is commonly called ‘stripping’. Its content betrays highly melodramatic overtones, its target viewership is almost exclusively female, and its focus rests mainly on family narratives propelled by strong female characters paired with male counterparts who are often portrayed in a strikingly emotional fashion. Soap operas thrive on the power of characterization: their typical slow pace responds to the necessities of a narrative that is essentially character-driven. Hence, as Robert C. Allen has amply demonstrated, intra-episodic redundancy, which frequently maddens the harshest critics of this genre, should be ascribed to the paradigmatic depth peculiar to the soap’s narrative:


events are repeated several times because, as competent spectators of a show would be able to demonstrate, they often affect different characters in different fashion. A diachronic study of any soap would in fact reveal an intricate web of character interactions, which motivates the deep affect that most events carry on a wide diegetic community: it is here that competent soap viewers proclaim their hermeneutic supremacy, since their unique ability to invoke a diachronic web of internal references allows them to perform a more complex and satisfactory reading of each individual re-instantiation of any possible event.10 The paradox inherent in this genre resides in the fact that although its viewership covers a wide age-spectrum, its narrative focus is mostly restricted to teenagers, young adults, and a handful of middle-aged characters. Furthermore, we should also bear in mind that the American soap generally portrays a classless universe.

While the American ‘soap opera’ portrays a world that is often out of reach of its viewer, the British ‘real drama’ speaks clearly about a commitment to an exploration of the life and struggles of the working and middle class. Thus Coronation Street, EastEnders, and Brookside ostensibly stay true to a universe they do not strive to create, but merely wish to represent: in her study on British and American drama, Christine Geraghty tackles this question, maintaining that realism in serial television should be located in the attempt to portray issues that are ‘contemporary and important’.11 British broadcasters have thus invested in a genre whose ‘realistic’ appeal rests on ‘an “authentic” regional experience and a particular class representation’.12 It is thanks to this ‘regional authority’ that the British ‘real drama’ defines itself against the American ‘soap opera’, which is not only classless but also ‘placeless’. Thus, the diverse portrayal of London’s East End, Northern England and the Midlands stands in stark contrast with the bland setting of all the American soaps, usually located in fictional towns that hardly betray regional markers: for example, loyal viewers of Guiding Light (the long-running American soap, first radio-broadcast in 1937, and subsequently transferred to television) have finally learned that its ‘Springfield’, one of the most common American town names, is actually the capital of Illinois. Its only regional marker, to this date, had been the scripts’ frequent reference to Chicago, and to one of its baseball teams, the Cubs. Although many British viewers commonly refer to their own serial dramas as ‘soaps’, and would rightly question their degree of genuine realism, it is in contrast to the American counterpart genre that an epithet like ‘realist’ retains value for scholars in the field; terms such as ‘realism’ and ‘realistic’ will thus be used here within this particular context of reference.

Evoked in the very notion of ‘telenovela’, the world of the popular novel informs the strident tones in which countless Latin American stories are narrated on-screen. At a structural level, ‘telenovelas’ differ from other serial dramas because of their finite number of episodes: diegetic closure thus connotes their narratives, which inevitably lead to the happy endings that never truly seem to be possible in


soap operas. More than any other form of serial drama, the ‘telenovela’ thrives on viewer input; thus, despite their finitude, they are more likely to be considered ‘open works’ because viewers, through focus groups and letter campaigns, are likely to influence the outcome of many events.

The lightness of comedy colours the images of Australian soaps, tales that have seemed to advertise a carefree and wholesome lifestyle rarely encountered on British or American serial dramas. Borrowing characteristics from all other forms of long serialization, they are connoted by a firm regionalism blended with the classless portrayal of American soaps and tempered by the light humour frequently present also in Latin American ‘telenovelas’.

Much has been written already on the reasons for the successful or unsuccessful career of these products outside their areas of production: to borrow a phrase from Tamar Liebes and Elihu Katz, the export of meaning has proved to be uneven.13 North American soaps and Latin American telenovelas have attracted a large viewership in Italy since their introduction in the early 1980s, whereas British serial drama was never aired on any of its networks, nor was the Australian, which infiltrated the industry, however, at a much deeper level. Indeed, Un posto al sole bears the production imprint of Grundy/Pearson, an Australian media corporation famous for its successful export of soap and game show formats. Loosely based on Neighbours, the most widely exported Australian soap, Un posto al sole is a ‘glocal’ hybrid, product of the graft of a global modus operandi onto a very regional universe.14

What’s in a place?

As scholars have often remarked, geography plays an essential role in all Italian soaps, and not just in Un posto al sole.15 Regardless of their Australian or North-American descent (Mediaset soaps, like Incantesimo, are closer to the North-American model), Italian soap operas stand out for their abundant use of location shooting. The city where they take place comes to inform, therefore, their very nature, hybridizing the genre in ever-changing fashion: Un posto al sole is suffused with Neapolitan comedy, just as Agrodolce embodies the contrasts, echoed in its very title, typical of so many images of Sicily. The more bourgeois atmosphere of Incantesimo is mirrored through the streets and squares of Rome, while the opulence of Northern Italy (Turin and the Lake Como area) acts as backdrop to the commercial and industrial universes portrayed respectively in Centovetrine and Vivere.

The geographical distance between RAI Tre soaps, located in the South, and Mediaset’s, all placed in the North, is bridged by the central location of Incantesimo, which once aired on RAI Uno. The working-class regionalism that


always connoted the institutional discourse of RAI Tre, founded in 1975 as a left-wing regional channel (it is the only public channel still to air local news), colours its serials in stark ideological contrast with the capitalistic portrayal of the North proposed by the products of Mediaset, the private network associated with the current Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Once again, RAI Uno is suspended in the balance between these two worlds, although Incantesimo, in format and content, seems closer to the conservative, upper-class discourse informing Centovetrine and Vivere. RAI Uno, it should not be forgotten, has long been considered a ‘generalist’ channel for its wide spectrum of programming and target audience, and also for its declared conservative leanings.

Death by format: Incantesimo

Incantesimo holds a special place in the history of Italian broadcasting because of its unconventional development. Although it is considered here as a soap opera, Incantesimo started as a night-time serial, aired once a week for a period of roughly seven months a year (an average season counted twenty-six episodes, interrupted during the Christmas holidays). For eight consecutive seasons, its 100-minute episodes were aired at primetime, first on RAI Due (1998-2000), then on RAI Uno (2000-2004), then back on RAI Due (2004-2006). Set in a cosmetic surgery clinic, symbolically called ‘Life’, it narrated the story of a group of doctors and nurses. Each series concentrated almost exclusively on the tortured love affair between two staff members of the clinic and featured a happy ending that always led to the eventual departure of the two protagonists, later replaced by a new couple. Oftentimes, the lead actors of the previous year returned for the first few episodes of the new season to facilitate the process of viewer fidelization, since abrupt changes in protagonists are known to alienate loyal viewers. What remained constant through the years was a large cast of supporting characters, often played by renowned stage and television actors of yesteryear, whose presence acted as a security blanket for the most loyal viewers. Because of its customary end-of-season resolution, Incantesimo was labelled by critics as a ‘telenovela’ and not perceived as a typical primetime soap.16

Initially broadcast in June 1998 as an alternative programme intended for women who refused to follow the World Cup, Incantesimo gradually gained a wider audience as its stories unfolded in episodes that grew progressively longer. It reached its audience peak in its second season (1999-2000) when it attracted an average of 5,548,000 viewers per episode.17 An ethnographic study of this show reports that viewers were simultaneously baffled and elated by its opaque serial nature. Incantesimo had started as a brief, almost illicit pleasure, a ‘room of one’s own’ for an audience which refused to pander to the fatherland’s wish for undivided devotion to the ritual of televised soccer. Yet the viewing of Incantesimo gradually


became a repeated, addictive encounter with a narrative that renewed its dramatic twists year after year, often without declaring when or where it would return.18 Indeed, the cult status of Incantesimo was reinforced by the minimal institutional investment needed in announcing each new series. Viewers were informed of the date of the new season’s premiere in a brief ‘promo’ shown at the end of the very last episode, and the actors playing its new lead roles were not revealed until the season was about to begin.

The elusive career of Incantesimo came to a halt in July 2008, two years after RAI decided to switch its format and ‘strip’ it as a soap-opera back on RAI Uno, broadcast at lunchtime in frontal competition against the juggernaut of all soaps, Beautiful.19 When it became a soap opera tout court, in late 2006, drastic changes were made to the show, as a consequence of the different budget allotted to a format that required continuous production over the entire year. The luxurious villas of the Roman suburbia, where the doctors and the chief administrators of the clinic lived, and which had long been the symbolic hallmark of a show that had captured the life of the rich and famous, were suddenly replaced with much cheaper sets – although much of the show was still shot on location, the streets and gardens of Rome substituted the Edenic abodes of the protagonists of the show. The combination of romance and mystery, suggested by the black and pink logo of the show, remained central to Incantesimo, although its focus shifted towards a choral, multifaceted narrative. Younger characters were introduced so as to make the show palatable to a school-age audience (lunch time programming is traditionally targeted at housewives, older viewers, teen and pre-teenagers) and attention to social issues, common to most soaps aired by RAI, became more evident. The romantic core of the show was widened, no longer including characters exclusively working in the clinic. Daytime romance and the very concept of family were profoundly reframed through the unprecedented introduction of a functional gay couple that quickly established itself as a central, nurturing presence in the show. Although much could be said about the over-sanitized portrayal of the two men, who were never shown exchanging more than a hug, the presence of these two core characters in a daytime show aired on the most conservative public broadcasting channel seems like a small revolution. While the show retained some of its supporting characters from its primetime days, remnants of past narratives steeped with profound intricacies, it embraced the characteristics of the new genre by becoming more character-centred and less plot-driven.

The loyalty of viewers who had followed the show on primetime was seriously tested by these changes, and not only because of the shift in content and format, but also for mere logistical reasons: daytime and primetime appeal to very different audiences, and considering that Digital Video Recorders have only just appeared on the Italian market, following Incantesimo on daytime meant recourse to daily videotaping of episodes which were often aired on a very irregular schedule. At


an institutional level, in fact, RAI demonstrated scant interest in the well-being of the show and little respect for its loyal viewers by placing it inside a ‘contenitore pomeridiano’, a larger variety show with a diverse agenda of entertainments that often interfered with a timely broadcasting of the soap. Angered viewers protested frequently, but to little avail, and the ratings suffered dramatically. New soaps usually require a long period of gestation before their ratings stabilize: this is a genre where viewer fidelization occurs slowly and is heavily influenced by secondary and tertiary paratexts (specialized press, internet, fanzines, and ‘water-cooler conversations’); but RAI announced its intention to cancel the show as a soap proper by the end of its first year. In an unusual turn of events, Italian politicians of all factions took up the fight of the 250 workers who would become unemployed, calling for a defence of a product ‘made in Italy’ which had been asked to compete with one of the most visible symbols of American cultural imperialism, Beautiful.20 The incident was of such magnitude that even The New York Times reported it, ascribing the responsibility for the impending cancellation to ‘RAI’s accountants [who] under pressure to cut costs and investments have turned their shears to daytime programming’.21 Although saved from impending cancellation thanks to the public outrage, Incantesimo was left on death row for the months that followed, and unchanged ratings during its second year (an average of 1,700,000 viewers per episode)22 led to its eventual demise on July 4, 2007.

The two weeks that preceded its cancellation witnessed, however, a wholly uncommon phenomenon for this genre, and for the entire world of daytime and primetime drama. The writing team manifested its discontentment against the broadcasting institution, in fact, by ‘talking back’ through the events narrated in the final episodes of Incantesimo. Although the last two seasons had significantly shifted away from the portrayal of the power struggles internal to the clinic, which had played a central role during the first eight years, the final ten episodes of the soap centred almost exclusively on the hostile takeover through which ‘Gomez’, a devious financer linked to international organized crime, had suddenly gained control of Life. A character introduced during the days of primetime broadcasting, Gomez had always embodied an exogenous threat to a closely-knit universe. Designated as a family enterprise because of the tight bond existing among its stockholders, the Life clinic had previously almost fallen into Gomez’s hands when its chief administrator had asked the loan-shark for financial assistance. The character returned several times during the past four seasons, only to be repeatedly defeated. It is for this reason that, when the last few episodes showed his latest attempt at a takeover, viewers were likely to anticipate his final demise. Not this time, however: during its last week, Incantesimo portrayed all clinic employees facing the inevitability of a dramatic change of leadership. In his first public statement, the new CEO of Life announced that the clinic would be closed for an indefinite period of time. As chaos began to spread, so did the discussion of what


would happen to patients and staff alike. While the former were asked to transfer to other facilities, the latter were left searching for new jobs in an increasingly difficult economy. The closing sequence of the show alternated images of Gomez walking through the silent, empty halls of the clinic with shots of the civil wedding ceremony between the head nurse and the chief of surgery, two characters who had only played a supporting role for the past several seasons.

It is quite evident that this storyline should not be seen as a mere escamotage to wrap up the multiple narrative threads of a long-running serial: as a matter of fact, soaps are known for resisting closure even in their final instalments. In the final juxtaposition of the triumph of evil with the happy ending for two non-central characters, I perceive the allegoric restaging of the battle between the institution and the creative team of Incantesimo. The final scene portraying Gomez locking the front gate of the empty clinic is a metaphor for the shutdown of the entire programme – the fact that the clinic itself is called Life acquires here great symbolic relevance, just as the etymologic foreignness of the loan-shark, along with his economic power, are there to remind viewers that the demise of the show was to be ascribed to extraneous forces which had little to do with its creative aspect. Like the patients of the clinic, suddenly discharged and transferred to a different facility, viewers were let go and re-directed to the competition; like the talented medical and paramedical staff, whose dispersion of talent was highly lamented by the former administrators of the clinic, actors, writers and other members of the production team were left to their own devices, free to take up new employment and bring their expertise elsewhere.

The portrayal of the marriage ceremony is equally loaded with significance. Although weddings are often used as perfect happy endings in novels and films, they usually fulfil a very different role in the open-ended structure of a soap opera, where they function as narrative thresholds ushering characters into new storylines: in this genre, in fact, the only characters who are likely to enjoy a happy marital life are those who are about to exit the show, since the continuous serial pivots on the portrayal of characters in constant struggle. Against this ‘generic’ background, Elsa and Oscar’s wedding assumes peculiar connotations: as minor figures in the show, they are not likely to foster profound viewer empathy, so their happy ending holds limited sway in the broader narrative economy of the soap, bringing no satisfactory sense of closure to the audience. The mere fact that the marriage is not celebrated in church, but as a civil union, further underscores its anticlimactic nature. Incantesimo does not end with a whimper, but with a very anticlimactic, angry bang; its final resolution is an original last attempt to talk back to an institution that has mandated its terminal silence. It is a potent reminder of the extent to which pop culture can indeed be seen as a site of a struggle between competing ideological discourses. If the absence of a final resolution in soaps equates, according to Milly Buonanno, ‘all’assenza di una morale della


storia’23 then Incantesimo loudly declares its moral standpoint by pointing a finger at its broadcasting institution, guilty of dispersing valuable talent and precious viewership at a time when both appear sorely lacking in the television industry.

Naples, Australia: Un posto al sole

When the first home-grown Italian soap opera debuted on RAI Tre, on October 21, 1996, critics rushed to define it a ‘flop opera’, an experiment with a genre held to be far below the high standards of an Italian television drama industry responsible for productions largely based on adaptations of literary masterpieces, and for miniseries tackling contemporary issues in cinematic fashion. However, in choosing to invest in long serialization, RAI had a dual purpose: it allowed public television to offer a product that could speak to viewers of different generations about their own experiences while also reviving an ailing centre of production in Naples, a city with a long tradition in the industry.24 Recognizing the fact that such a product required competences that Italian broadcasters did not possess, RAI sought help from Grundy, an Australian corporation that had already conceived similar products for other European countries.25 The imported format was that of Neighbours, the most successful Australian export of all times. Set on a street on the outskirts of Melbourne, Neighbours portrayed the stories of its middle-class inhabitants. Un posto al sole exchanged the horizontal dimension (a street) for a vertical one (a building), narrating the tales of the men and women living in Palazzo Palladini, former residence of a noble Neapolitan family, now divided into a block of apartments where people of different classes and backgrounds have taken residence, all of them metaphorically in search of a place in the Neapolitan sun. Horizontality and verticality are dimensions that acquire symbolic valence when we consider that, differently from the classlessness that homogenizes the universe portrayed in Neighbours, Un posto al sole rests firmly on the differences that separate its characters. Much of the comedy and the drama that colour the episodes of this soap stem precisely from the bridging and the negotiation of these differences – characters are portrayed ascending or descending a symbolic ladder that moves them from the apartment still belonging to the Palladinis, owners of an exclusive shipyard, to the terrazza, shared by a group of young adults still in search of self-realization. In one of the first essays dedicated to this soap, Milly Buonanno and Marcia Gomes maintain that the different apartments in the building actually stage different sub-genres internal to the programme, ranging from the ‘domesticom’ and the ‘family melodrama’ to the ‘doomed love story’, the ‘urban singles dramedy’, and the ‘dynastic feuilleton’.26

Initially broadcast at 6:30pm, right before the evening newscast, Un posto al sole was sheltered from strong competition while also being placed in a slot that


attracted a smaller portion of viewers.27 Such a move, identified by Buonanno as an institutional practice signifying a form of ‘protezione senza sostegno’28 appears to me, on the contrary, to be extremely supportive of a new programme. During the first few weeks of broadcasting, every episode of Un posto al sole was repeated later in the day, a practice later replaced by Saturday maxi-repeats that allowed viewers to catch up through a weekly summary of the show. Because Un posto al sole never followed the scheduling practices common to imported soaps, which aired all year long, recap episodes were aired before the show began its second and third season, favouring again fidelization and new access to the soap. Highly contested for its initially low ratings, the show remained on the air and slowly gained a steady share of the audience. When it was moved away from ‘Fringe Evening’ (6:30pm) into the coveted area of ‘Access Primetime’ (8:30pm) hammocked between Blob and primetime programming, Un posto al sole firmly stood its ground, competing against highly successful shows like Affari tuoi and Striscia la notizia.29 The proof of its increasing success came a few months ago, when RAI Tre decided to move it further into access primetime to make room for its newest soap, Agrodolce, which was thus hammocked between Blob and the Neapolitan drama. By placing it after Agrodolce, RAI Tre demonstrated trust and commitment towards its first long serial, and its belief in the soap’s ability to direct viewers towards a brand new show. Its ratings for 2008 were estimated at an average of 2,500,000 viewers, but in early 2009 its viewership has actually increased to 3,000,000 viewers; Agrodolce, instead, has climbed from an initial average of 1,000,000 viewers to a recent peak of almost 1,700,000 viewers.30

What differentiates Un posto al sole from other soaps, making its target viewership so diverse in age, gender, and background, is a productive formula distinct from that of the more canonical soap operas imported from the US (or from the Mediaset soaps, which were closely modelled after the American format). Sara Melodia, in an article on long serialization, describes its structure as that of a complex productive machine: ‘La formula produttiva di Un posto al sole prevede blocchi da cinque puntate settimanali, sette linee narrative per blocco che coprano le tre macrostrutture della commedia, del drammatico e del sentimentale, diciotto personaggi e scene da un minuto e mezzo’.31 What results is a programme that moves extremely fast, resolving and revolving storylines with uncommon swiftness. Viewers of Un posto al sole never expect endlessly delayed resolutions, and the use of reaction shots, so typical of the medium and the genre, is here kept to a minimum. Advertisements are equally limited: the only commercial break occurs roughly five minutes into each episode, which begins with a brief recap, opening credits, and a short sequence that resolves the cliff-hanger from the previous instalment. Only then, the solution to the hermeneutic code temporarily provided, does the show go to commercials – viewers who have been watching the show at the dinner table are free to get up or take a quick glance at the new contestant on


Affari tuoi (usually introduced just at that moment) or catch the headlines of the RAI Due evening news.

The alternating genres woven into the narrative (comedy, drama, and romance) are parallel to its cross-generational focus – in contrast to American soaps, Un posto al sole does not cater solely to a specific demographic, but insists on reaching out to a very wide target audience. Thus, characters of all ages are the focus of all three types of subgenres. North American soaps have long instituted ‘Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome’, a practice by which children are suddenly turned into late teens, so that their storyline may become appealing to the most desired demographic (women, age 18-35). On the contrary, Un posto al sole has remained committed to a more realistic narration, fostering viewer loyalty by employing children who grow up on the show, before the camera, eventually turning into young adults and full-fledged protagonists of important storylines. By the same token, it has not discarded aging veterans of the show, cherishing their presence in an ever-active fashion: older characters on the show are not de-sexualized nor de-romanticized; even as grandparents, they are able to find new love and are granted storylines in which they are protagonists.

Regionalism plays a very important role in the success of the show: Naples is much more than mere setting, it is a protagonist in itself, with its criminal underworld often evoked through storylines connected to the resident journalist, detective, or private investigator. But the Naples of Un posto al sole is not always the dysfunctional urban hell dominated by organized crime portrayed in cop shows and non-fictional exposés – it is the place in the sun where many of the protagonists have chosen to live. The word ‘chosen’ here is particularly relevant, because quite a few characters have actually moved against the tide, emigrating to the South from Rome and Milan, cities where many Neapolitans took residence in search of success. Raffaele Giordano, the doorman of Palazzo Palladini, is unquestionably the heart of the show – it is often through him that we access the events of the many inhabitants of the building, as proven by the celebratory 1,500th episode, which he narrates in first person. His working-class background allows us to perceive class difference from below, and to interpret the exclusive world of the Palladinis as that of an elite whose actions are often beyond access or comprehension.32 Played by Patrizio Rispo in an acting style closely modelled after Totò, a key figure in Neapolitan iconography, Raffaele is often portrayed next to his brother-in-law Renato (Marzio Honorato), who assumes the role of ‘spalla’ once made famous by Peppino de Filippo. Such iconographic evocation of archetypal figures in the cinematic portrayal of Naples and its inhabitants is among the key aspects of the success of Un posto al sole. Raffaele and Renato, however, are only two of many male protagonists of a programme that seems to push generic boundaries through an uncharacteristic (for soaps) focus on the male universe. Contrary to most soap operas, so closely associated with heroines and villainesses, Un posto al sole is a


show dominated by its male protagonists. During its twelve years, many women have gone through the hallways and bedrooms of Palazzo Palladini, and most of them have eventually left, while the men have remained the constant pivot of the show’s daily narrative. Mothers and sisters, girlfriends and wives have entered and exited the lives of the protagonists. Raffaele’s first wife fell victim to an accidental shooting when the production decided to kill off the character in order to grant dramatic depth to the doorman’s figure; recently, Renato’s estranged wife decided to follow her new partner to Albania, allowing her husband and teenage son to become the new ‘odd couple’ of the show. Such an unusual focus is perhaps more likely to foster male viewer identification, while encouraging female audiences to view these male characters as possible objects of desire.

A mixed audience target, attentive to viewer pleasure and identification across gender and background, is further evidenced by the speed of a narrative that prefers ellipsis to redundancy. While American soaps traditionally cater to a female distracted viewer who watches the show while doing other chores, thus making sure all relevant information is repeated several times per episode,33 Un posto al sole follows the opposite route, often asking its viewers to fill in the gaps for events undisclosed onscreen.34 The active spectator of this show cannot afford to miss chunks of a narrative process that is quite unique in our contemporary soapscape, bearing in mind also its tendency to hibernate storylines for entire months and years. Thus, seeds for future story arcs are dispersed through the narrative only to be picked up, in many cases, at a much later time: the appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of primary and secondary characters is thus storyline dictated, and rarely dependant on extra-diegetic contractual decisions. Furthermore, the ability of the show to retain the original actors in most returning roles facilitates viewer loyalty and encourages an ‘effet du réel’ that generally differentiates this soap from many others. Viewer identification is also reinforced by the fact that, in contrast to Incantesimo, the Mediaset soaps, and its North American counterparts, Un posto al sole employs a cast of actors and actresses who look strikingly ordinary.

Un posto al sole has faithfully reproduced its country’s social trends in showing a world where the institution of marriage has lost much of its power – couples move in together, and rarely wed. The ‘terrazza’, residence of the young adults of the soap, is the threshold crossed by most characters at their moment of ‘emancipation’ from the birth family. It marks the abandonment of a familial space that is often, however, still located in the immediate neighbourhood (if not in the building).35 Over the years, the middle ground represented by these characters has considerably expanded, as many of the young adults who were initially residing in the terrazza have remained or returned (because it is a point of departure and, when necessary, a point of return) while a few more have arrived, or ascended, from the apartments where they once lived as children. This flattening of the middle generation, which has come to include a wider segment of the cast, when applied to


its almost exclusive male membership, mirrors the Italian male’s inability to grow up and take responsibility.36 Un posto al sole thus caters to viewers enamoured of the Italian ‘buddy movie’, which from Amici miei (1975) to L’ultimo bacio (2001), has proven to be one of the most successful genres within the many declinations of the commedia all’italiana. Like its cinematic counterparts, this soap often takes to task, through the unsettling power of comedy, those not-so-young adults who, while rejecting stereotypical ‘mammismo’, are still prey to perennial immaturity.

During the weeks preceding its 2008 summer hiatus, Un posto al sole renounced most of its comic traits, favouring instead a series of dramatic storylines attuned to the pressing events of its time, which were closely modelled, once again, on a series of successful films and books. Three parallel stories treated the underworld of Neapolitan organized crime, portraying its handling of Balkan immigrants, the world of illegal gambling, and the investigation of a journalist who is writing an exposé similar to Roberto Saviano’s Gomorra.37 Although indirectly linked to romantic storylines involving many other characters of the show, and thus part of the melodramatic structure of the soap’s grand narrative, these three story arcs were tinged with the detached, quasi-documentary look adopted by Matteo Garrone in his successful adaptation of Saviano’s book (2008). When the summer hiatus began, viewers were left with a series of cliff-hangers concerning the safety of several characters involved in these storylines, which were then provisionally resolved in early September, when the show resumed. During its interruption, however, viewers were given a brief respite, while maintaining a remote connection with the parallel universe established by the Neapolitan soap, through Un posto al sole d’estate, an eight-week ‘spin off’ which has now entered its third season.

Because of its finite number of episodes, and the distinct nature of its narrative, we could argue that Un posto al sole d’estate is not a soap opera (or a ‘real drama’) but a ‘telenovela’. For the past three seasons, it has subtly reinforced the soap’s construction of a parallel universe, by bringing selected characters from Un posto al sole into a different setting and launching them into a very different type of storylines. Always set in a vacation resort outside Naples, Un posto al sole d’estate throws a handful of well-established characters in the midst of a ‘whodunit’, always resolved at the very end of the summer. Its target demographic is clearly dual: on one hand, the summer flings at the beach resorts clearly speak to teenagers (and this is a practice common to all North-American soaps, which introduce younger characters only during the summer) while on the other, it caters to the older viewers by following the vacations of its aging veterans, who have often been the catalysts for the most comic storylines. Its ultimate function is that of a ‘home away from home’ – a summer resort that viewers visit every summer along with some of their favourite characters, as they wait to be re-immersed into the daily drama of Un posto al sole.


New frontiers: Agrodolce

The opening credits of Agrodolce, a soap that premiered on Monday September 8, 2008, the same night Un posto al sole began airing its new episodes after the summer hiatus, begin on a dark screen bearing the official imprint of RAI Educational and the Regione Sicilia, followed by the click of an old film projector, the first subject of a close up that then pans over the body and face of a man standing behind it. The man is Giovanni Minoli, director of RAI Educational, and sponsor of RAI Tre’s venture into long serialization: like Hitchcock, the promoter of Un posto al sole places himself on screen, at the very beginning of the credits of each single episode of its new programme. The opening credits continue to unfold at the gentle rhythm of a warm melody that recalls its Sicilian setting: an old-style countdown is projected on the side wall of a building at dusk, then the camera cuts to a medium shot of the Sicilian coastline, children running around boats which are later portrayed at closer range, followed by a group of adults who walk after their children. The camera cuts to another image projected onto the building wall, this time showing two men and a woman, then we are back to the coastline, older people sitting to watch the projected images which now show a young couple embracing against the background image of a Sicilian classical temple. More people on the beach open folded chairs and sit down, as the source of the images on the wall is finally revealed to be another projector, located on a boat just off the shore of a quaint Sicilian village. More characters appear in the projected images, presented in groups of two, three or four, already introduced as family networks, with the exception of a young man, dressed in a Carabiniere uniform, clearly marked as of a different ethnic background (North African), portrayed alone at the very end of the credits. He is the odd man out, viewers may infer: he has no family, he is racially other to the world portrayed in these credits; yet, because of the uniform he wears and due to the significant positioning in the order of credit presentation, he is likely to be the protagonist of the show, or at least one of its heroes.

Intertextual references are clearly evoked from the beginning of this title sequence: the Sicily portrayed in the credits of Agrodolce is that of Tornatore’s Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988), which has unarguably provided the most exportable, nostalgic image of a land abandoned yet eventually regained. The gradual approach of young and old viewers to the wall projecting the images of the cast mirrors a spectatorship that will build itself over a period of time, and its fleeting portrayal of Sicilian landmarks in the background anticipates another mirroring: the stories projected on the wall, and by extension each weekday on the small screen, will be those of a different, more composite Sicily from that previously presented onscreen. Evoked in the oxymoron of its very title, the image of Sicily portrayed in Agrodolce combines its many contrasting aspects, and its subtitle Romanzo popolare equally locates the intertextual sources (literature, cinema,


television) from which such complex portrayal will arise. Thus, from the very first sequences of the show, viewers encounter familiar archetypes that literature and popular culture have long associated with Sicily: the matrimony that is meant to unite decaying nobility and powerful bourgeoisie carries echoes of Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Gattopardo (1957), the portrayal of the relaxed yet competent local police clearly harks back to the world of Camilleri’s Montalbano (1994-), the brief references to the criminal underworld call to mind La piovra (1984-2001) and its many imitators, and the gloomy universe inhabited by the family of a disabled fisherman recalls one of the oldest literary images of the island, painted by Giovanni Verga in I Malavoglia (1881).38

Although many of these literary, cinematic and televisual references carry a pessimistic vision of the Sicilian condition, Agrodolce remains true to the contrasting ambivalence of its title: despite the hardships they often encounter, its characters embody a desire to succeed, and to project (here this word should be considered for its polysemic force) an optimistic view of the future. Although less regularly than Un posto al sole, Agrodolce balances drama and romance with light comedy, presenting characters whose exchanges are modelled after the Sicilian equivalent of the Neapolitan school of comedy: the archetypal figures of Totò and Peppino are here replaced by those of Franco and Ciccio, the pair of comedians who were considered in the ’60s and ’70s as Italy’s Laurel and Hardy. What is particularly striking, in comparison to Un posto al sole, is the emphasis placed on female characters in the show: while the narrative of Un posto al sole firmly relies on its male characters for dramatic and comedic purposes alike, Agrodolce takes the opposite tack, foregrounding female characters in both modes.

The first episode opens on the image of a ship approaching Palermo, from which a young woman descends – her arrival marks the beginning of the narration, and it is a very symbolic arrival. Lucia is returning to Sicily after the completion of medical school in London; her boyfriend, the youngest descendant of a noble family, awaits her at the harbour, and soon after he will ask her to marry him. Prisoner of the literary ancestry embodied in her name, Lucia will not marry young Federico, and much narrative mileage will be made, in future episodes, from a wedding that, for unforeseen reasons ‘non s’ha da fare’. But let us take a step back, and return to the beginning: Lucia’s arrival is symbolic because, as viewers, we are arriving with her. As she walks through the small town where she was born, the fictional borgo of Lumera, we discover characters, families, and places that soon become central to a universe that, with her, we will frequent for an undertermined future. Because of her studies abroad, Lucia is also a purveyor of knowledge, and an immigrant who has chosen to return home, so that her entire community may benefit from what she has learned. Symbolically, her journey is parallel to that of an entire creative team that gathered knowledge imparted abroad (Agrodolce is


produced by Grundy and, like Un posto al sole, was conceived by its mastermind Wayne Doyle) applying it to a local reality.

Like Un posto al sole, Agrodolce has an institutional mission, that of reviving production in an area that has long suffered from the centralization of institutional broadcasting in cities like Rome, Milan, and Turin. And the sponsorship of the Regione Sicilia places equal emphasis on its duty to portray the island in a more complex and realistic light while employing local resources and training local workmanship.39 In the very first episodes, taking a cheap shot at Incantesimo, Lucia refuses a job offer in a prestigious cosmetic surgery clinic (obtained through her father’s nepotism) and chooses to work in the public sector as guardia medica at the local hospital. Wearing its progressive ideology on its sleeve, Agrodolce doubles the dose by juxtaposing Lucia’s portrayal to that of her best friend Lena, who teaches Italian at a local high school. Lena’s impassioned tirades to her students begin from the first episode, when she exhorts her class not to abandon Sicily, but to work for its rebirth. The dissenting voices of some of her pupils, instead, embody the scepticism and the sense of self-defeat perceived as the island’s biggest enemy. Symbols of hope and civic resistance, the two women constitute the very heart of the show – their professional adventures fuel much of the action, and so does their rapport with the remaining part of the cast. Living under the same roof, they give shelter to Khafi and Ghedia, an African immigrant and his son, and help them confront the xenophobic prejudice shown by the rest of the town. Motivated by the extreme difficulties met in adjusting to a hostile environment, the eventual departure of the two men demonstrates that Agrodolce tempers its progressive idealism, however, with a good dose of realism.40

Agrodolce reaches its highest melodramatic peak in the portrayal of a fisherman’s family, whose indigence is depicted in anachronistic and almost pietistic fashion: it is quite paradoxical, however, that it is through these stock characters that viewers can identify the literary legacy of the father of verismo, Giovanni Verga. Agrodolce thus heightens its narrative pitch where its raw material might call, instead, for a more neutral, naturalistic tone. The extreme darkness of the interiors where these characters live bespeaks their marginal role in a vibrant Sicily that seems to have left them behind; such gloominess stands in stark contrast to the postcard imagery of the island offered in most other internal and external locations. The obscurity of the fishermen’s living quarters is symbolically reinforced by the linguistic opacity deriving from their frequent use of Sicilian dialect, which significantly hinders full comprehension of many exchanges. Although it evokes the realism of Verga’s masterpieces, the use of dialect is likely to affect viewer fidelization at a national level: while it is possibly a marker of endearment for a local audience and for southern Italians living abroad (Agrodolce has quickly become a main staple in the daily programming of RAI International), the arguably excessive regionalism of the show may well inhibit viewer fidelity at a national level.


Days of our lives?

When read against the demise of Incantesimo, the simultaneous success of Un posto al sole and the new investment in Agrodolce bespeaks an institutional discourse that is firmly committed towards a national production that cherishes its local, regional roots. However, due attention needs to be paid to the different ideological forces moving the two different channels on which Incantesimo and the two other soaps are broadcast: their scheduling politics reflect a different commitment to long serialization and to its protective incubatory practices. Tied to the necessity of competing with Mediaset’s ratings, while remaining faithful to an ideological orientation that is strikingly similar to that of its direct competitor, RAI Uno has appeared to be unable and unwilling to invest in a product that requires great institutional sheltering before becoming economically viable. The mere fact that the eventual success of a soap opera on RAI Uno would likely be at the expense of a competitor that has too often been revealed as a secret bedfellow is likely to discourage any form of investment. It is in this light that we should read the untimely demise of Incantesimo, and the exceptional reaction of its creative team. Paradoxically, what is true for soap operas does not apply to all other types of drama, given that RAI Uno is possibly the largest producer and broadcaster of this genre in public television. We can only surmise that long serialization brings different financial concerns to the table, and thus plays a very different role in the regime of imperfect duopoly (recently extended by the launch of original drama produced and broadcast by Sky TV) that has long plagued Italian broadcasting.

On a very different note, RAI Tre has kept a firm grasp on its broadcasting of serialized drama, remaining true to its original commitment to progressive institutional practices that put primary emphasis on a regional realism aimed at educating while entertaining. Informare, educare, intrattenere: these three verbs embodied the unspoken rules informing the institutional discourse of public broadcasting prior to the arrival of Mediaset. While cursory grazing through the many channels would clearly demonstrate that the rules of broadcasting, public and private, have dramatically shifted, RAI Tre has been able, for several reasons, to follow its own path. 41 Currently the only public channel committed to long serialization, it is also alone in limiting its drama production almost exclusively to just two shows. When placed within the wider context of the content broadcast by this channel, Un posto al sole and Agrodolce acquire a different symbolic dimension. Part and parcel of the institutional discourse of a channel that has long promoted a civic responsibility towards its viewers, these shows should thus be seen as ‘tranches de vie’ through which RAI Tre turns our television set into a version of the sidewall of Agrodolce’s credits, projecting and reflecting back, on its flickering surface, our own image and the very chronicle of the days of our lives.


Notes1 Ang Lee, Watching Dallas (London: Routledge, 1985).

2 Marie Gillespie, Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change

(London: Routledge, 1995).

3 Chris Barker, Global Television (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

4 Joseph D. Straubhaar’s World Television: From Global to

Local (Los Angeles: Sage, 2007).

5 Fidelization is a term specific to the field of television

studies, referring to a form of viewer loyalty that ensures

the health of all broadcasting institutional practices.

6 Originally published by Nielsen Media, these ratings

were taken from TV by the Numbers, a website exclusively

dedicated to the study of TV ratings in the US. <http://

tvbythenumbers.com/category/ratings> [accessed 12

March 2009]

7 The initial provision was mandated by the European

Community in 1989 (no. 552) and was later modified by

the European Council and by the European Parliament in

1997 (no. 36, June 30, 1997). It was formally applied in

Italy through a law ratified by the Italian Parliament on

April 30, 1998 (no. 122).

8 Alessandro Silj, East of Dallas: The European Challenge

to American Television (London: BFI, 1988), pp. 195-96.

9 ‘La soppressione del telos, o fine della storia, rende la

soap opera una narrativa a-teleologica, sovvertitrice delle

regole canoniche della narratività, che vogliono una storia

articolata secondo un inizio, uno svolgimento, e una fine. È

materia di discussione se la soap abbia un inizio, o meglio

se l’inizio coincida con la prima puntata, dal momento che

si può cominciare a seguire un qualsiasi serial quotidiano

a partire dalla puntata ennesima; per quanto offra alle

spettatrici più fedeli un motivo di vanto e il privilegio di

appartenere alla comunità dei seguaci “della prima ora”,

vedere una soap dall’inizio non fa parte dei canoni della

fruizione, non è richiesto come lo è nel caso della visione

di un film o della lettura di un libro. Se è dubbio che abbia

un principio, o dove questo risieda, è invece certo che la

soap non ha una fine, un epilogo, una chiusura’. Milly

Buonanno, Sulla scena del rimosso: il drama televisivo e

il senso della storia (Florence: Ipermedium libri, 2007),

pp. 111-12.

10 For a detailed discussion of this issue, see

Robert C. Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 1985), pp. 69-75.

11 Christine Geraghty, Women and Soap Opera (Oxford:

Polity, 1991), pp. 32-35.

12 Geraghty, Women and Soap Opera, p. 35.

13 In The Export of Meaning: Cross-cultural Readings of

Dallas (Oxford: Polity, 1993), Liebes and Katz consider the

reception of Dallas in the non-Western world, discussing

the results of an ethnographic study conducted through

interviews with audiences from Israel, Morocco and Japan.

The intersection of globalization and localization is the

focus of Straubhaar’s World Television: From Global to

Local, another ethnographic study that discusses the

complex reception of Brazilian telenovelas in non-Latin

American countries which have produced their own hybrid

form of the genre.

14 For a discussion of the worldwide success of Neighbours,

see Stephen Crofts, ‘Global Neighbours?’ in To Be

Continued…: Soap Operas Around the World, ed. by Robert

C. Allen (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 98-121. For a

discussion of the hybridization of the Australian soap in Italy,

see Milly Buonanno, Indigeni si diventa: locale e globale

nella serialità televisiva (Milan: Sansoni, 1999), pp. 144-50.

15 Luisella Bolla, in her diachronic study of Italian daytime

and primetime fiction, talks about ‘il senso del luogo’,

reminding us that, in these products, ‘[l]o spazio nella sua

interezza si fa racconto, diventa storia’ (Incantesimi: Alice

nel paese della fiction, Florence: Vallecchi, 2004, p. 140).

Milly Buonanno and Marcia Gomes discuss the symbolic

importance of the Neapolitan setting of Un posto al sole

in ‘Il programma dell’anno: Un posto al sole. Una duplice

lettura della prima soap opera italiana’ in Provando e

riprovando: la fiction italiana, l’Italia nella fiction, ed. by

Milly Buonanno (Rome: RAI-ERI, 1999), pp. 91-98. Jean

Mottet juxtaposes the Italian soap’s domestic and urban

spaces in Série télévisée et éspace domestique: la télévision,

la maison, le monde (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005), pp. 103-19.

Anna Lucia Natale provides a detailed comparison of the

diverse importance of geographical setting in all Italian

soaps in ‘Comunità imperfette: il mondo delle soap’, in

Realtà multiple: concetti, generi e audience della fiction TV,

ed. by Milly Buonanno (Naples: Liguori, 2004), pp. 120-29.

16 Milly Buonanno calls Incantesimo ‘una telenovela sui

generis, come nel bene e nel male risultano spesso le

ficton italiane quando si confrontano, dalla prospettiva

di una tradizione non seriale, con la lunga serialità’ (La


formula del racconto televisivo: la sovversione del tempo

nelle narrative seriali. Milan: Sansoni, 2002, p. 134). Anna

Lucia Natale defines it as a felicitous ‘nuovo esempio di

integrazione tra narrative chiuse e aperte’ (‘Comunità

imperfette’, p. 109). The customary happy ending on which

most seasons of Incantesimo ended clearly identifies the

show as a telenovela: in soap operas, in fact, weddings are

never considered a narrative point of conclusion, but the

prelude to a host of new storylines.

17 Osservatorio sulla Fiction Italiana, Catalogo della fiction

italiana: 1988-2000 (Rome: RAI-ERI, 2001), p. 191.

18 Felicita Gabellieri and Marcia Gomes, ‘I piaceri di

Incantesimo: il punto di vista dell’audience’, in Passaggio

a Nordovest: la fiction italiana, l’Italia nella fiction, ed. by

Milly Buonanno (Rome: RAI-ERI, 2001), pp. 109-42.

19 Created in Hollywood as a product made for worldwide

export, The Bold and the Beautiful has enjoyed tremendous

success all over the world. Renamed Beautiful in Italy, it

has come to stand as a unique commodity in the world

of serial broadcasting. Fiercely contended between RAI,

which aired it from1990 to 1994, and Mediaset, which

subsequently acquired the rights, it was used successfully

to direct viewers to Mediaset’s own Centovetrine and

Vivere. Paola Colaiacomo analyses this show as a popular

epic of the modern time in Tutto questo è Beautiful: forme

narrative della fine millennio (Rome: Sossella, 1999).

20 Colaiacomo, after opening her book with a section

entitled Ma come, anche tu guardi Beautiful? eventually

defines Beautiful as ‘una narrazione che è insieme tanto

inconsistente e tanto saldamente presente nell’esperienza

quotidiana di ciascuno di noi’ (Tutto questo è Beautiful,

p. 19).

21 Elisabetta Povoledo, ‘In Italy, Politicians Agree on Saving

a Soap Opera’, The New York Times, 23 July 2007.

22 Originally published by Auditel JIC, these ratings

appeared in Dipiù TV, 5:1 (5 January 2009), p. 36.

23 Buonanno, Sulla scena del rimosso, p. 114.

24 According to Sergio Brancato, the creation of Un posto

al sole was the direct consequence of the Rapporto

Fichera, a study conducted in the 1980s which revealed

the necessity of ‘uno spostamento complessivo del

sistemo audiovisivo nazionale in direzione di una concreta

innovazione non tanto dell’idea di “prodotto” in sé,

quanto del suo “processo” di realizzazione’ (Senza fine:

immaginario e scrittura della fiction seriale in Italia,

Naples: Liguori, 2007, p. 111).

25 Grundy’s The Restless Years was remade in the

Netherlands (1990) and Germany (1992), while the

concept of Sons and Daughters was licensed in Germany

(1995), Sweden (1996), Greece (1998), Italy (as Cuori

rubati in 2002), and Croatia (2004).

26 Buonanno and Gomes, ‘Il programma dell’anno’, p. 97.

About the contrast between horizontal and vertical

dimension of the Italian soap and its Australian format,

the two scholars claim that ‘i luoghi – la strada, il palazzo

– funzionano dunque in entrambe le soap da metafore

sociali, ma con riferimento a società diverse’ (p. 97).

27 Buonanno claims that the placement of this program

on RAI Tre was to be seen as a further handicap, since

the channel’s viewership was considerably smaller than

that of RAI Uno and RAI Due, and it was an audience

significantly less exposed to drama (Buonanno and Gomes,

‘Il programma dell’anno’, p. 87).

28 Buonanno and Gomes, ‘Il programma dell’anno’, p. 89.

29 ‘Fringe Evening’ is usually considered a ‘soft’ area of

broadcasting, covering the late afternoon hours when

viewership and competition amongst networks are limited.

‘Access Primetime’ is instead one of the most coveted

programming slots, since it follows the Evening News and

ushers viewers into Primetime shows. ‘Access Primetime’

therefore is said to work as a ‘hammock’ between the most

competitive hours of broadcasting in public and private

networks. In our case, however, RAI Tre has traditionally

chosen to anticipate its Evening News, followed for the

past two decades by Blob, a popular show that compiles

brief excerpts from programs aired during the previous day

on all public and private channels, recreating the viewing

experience of a compulsive ‘channel surfer’ through quick

editing that often has bitingly satirical overtones. During

‘Access Primetime’, RAI Uno has capitalized on the wide

following of Affari tuoi, the Italian version of Deal or No

Deal, a Dutch game show whose format that has been

successfully exported in almost sixty countries. Canale 5,

instead, has relied sine 1988 on Striscia la notizia, a satirical

programme responsible for exposing, over the years, various

forms of institutional corruption and business scams.

30 Auditel ratings for 2008 are excerpted from Dipiù TV,

5:1 (January 2009), p. 40. The newer ratings (respectively

3,032,000 and 1,679,000 viewers for the episodes aired


on March 9, 2009) are taken from Davide Maggio’s Blog

located at <http://www.davidemaggio.it/archives/4506>

[accessed 12 March 2009].

31 Sara Melodia, ‘La lunga serialità’ in Le logiche della

televisione, ed. by Gianfranco Bettetini, Paolo Braga, and

Armando Fumagalli (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004), pp. 286-

301 (p. 289).

32 In recent years, the Palladinis have gradually left the show,

and their apartment has been taken over by Roberto Ferri, a

ruthless businessman whose lifestyle is still extremely elitist.

33 In contrast to Robert C. Allen, mentioned above, Tania

Modleski maintains that: ‘The formal properties of daytime

television […] accord closely with the rhythms of women’s

work in the home. […] The script writers, anticipating

the housewife’s distracted state, are careful to repeat

important elements of the story several times’ (Loving with

a Vengeance, London: Routledge, 1982, p. 102).

34 In recent episodes, Un posto al sole has directed its

most piercing satire towards its very own genre, launching

a storyline that centered on the dangers of addictive

viewership to serial television. Its protagonist is quite

appropriately not a woman but a man, traffic warden

Guido Del Bue, who goes to great length to enjoy his

favorite telenovela, Saudade do sol, in absolute solitude.

Much mileage is derived from scenes portraying the

impossibility of solipsistic consumption, and equal hilarity

has stemmed from Guido’s profound identification with

storylines and characters. His eventual participation in an

episode of the show, which has come to film in Naples for

a few weeks, appears as the ultimate goal of the addicted

fan whose ultimate desire is to cross the threshold of the

television screen and become part of his own fantasy

world. The final acknowledgment that Guido’s role was that

of a corpse acts as final punch line on this ironic parable on

the deadening effects of serial television viewership.

35 Brancato calls the terrazza ‘lo spazio dissonante che

ospita una sorte di comune fondata sul valore dell’amicizia’

(Senza fine, p. 129).

36 For this consideration, I am indebted to a friend and

colleague who discussed this topic with me at great

length, Maria Adelaide Basile.

37 Roberto Saviano, Gomorra (Milan: Mondadori, 2006).

38 A year before its launch, Brancato defined the upcoming

Sicilian soap as ‘una serie ambientata nel meridione e

che adatterebbe, in maniera perfino simbolica, i luoghi

della vecchia cultura industriale alle esgienze delle nuove

fabbriche dell’immaginario’ (Senza fine, p. 139)

39 In an interview with La Stampa, when Agrodolce was

in the development stage, Minoli emphasized the need

to provide a new portrayal of Sicily: ‘Gli sbarchi degli

immigrati avvengono in Sicilia, il conflitto tra occupati

e disoccupati è là che è più vivo, il campo culturale è

fertilissimo e aspetta solo di essere arato’ (interview given

in December 2002, quoted in Bolla, Incantesimi, p. 139).

40 Agrodolce was created after a long period of

development, and its difficult gestation was given wide

publicity by the press. For this reason, it has often been

mentioned in critical studies authored well before its

airdate. Bolla, for instance, placed particular emphasis on

the choice of Palermo (later replaced with Lumera, a small

village on its outskirts) as a setting: ‘Palermo è un campo

da dissodare e fertilizzare non solo con le risorse della

storia e dell’arte, ma con le diverstà etniche, i conflitti e gli

antagonismi sociali, i buchi neri imprigionati dalla crescita

disordinata della metropoli, le smarginature della periferia’

(Incantesimi, p. 139).

41 In an interview in I Love Sicilia, Gianni Minoli says ‘Io

credo che la RAI abbia perduto coscienza di sé, l’orgoglio

della propria identità. Perché da servizio pubblico non

ha più messo, al centro del proprio racconto, né l’uomo

né il cittadino ma il consumatore. E di quello, invece, si

deve occupare la tv commerciale’. Salvatore Rizzo, ‘Gianni

Minoli: a Termini Imerese la mia fabbrica di fiction’, in I

Love Sicilia, 20 (April 2007), p. 134.

Giancarlo Lombardi, College of Staten Island and Graduate Centre/CUNY

[email protected]

© Department of Italian Studies, University of Reading and Departments of Italian, University of Cambridge and University of Leeds

10.1179/026143409X12488561926423

Days of Italian lives: Charting the contemporary soapscape on Italian public television

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