The transatlantic romance of television studies and the 'tradition of quality' in Italian tv drama

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JPTV 1 (2) pp. 175–189 Intellect Limited 2013

Journal of Popular Television Volume 1 Number 2

© 2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jptv.1.2.175_1

Milly BuonannoLa Sapienza University of Roma

The transatlantic romance

of television studies and the

‘tradition of quality’ in italian

TV drama

aBsTracT

The starting point of the critical discourse developed in the article is the current celebration of (a certain kind of) American series, which having gained huge cultural and aesthetic cachet due to a set of generic features, have turned into the epitome of ‘quality TV’ and monopolize scholarly attention and investigation. In this connection, I make the claim that television studies are at risk of validating processes of unilat-eral canonization which end up overshadowing the range of different conceptions and traditions of quality that exist in different televisual cultures. The Italian case is emblematic of the role assumed by American television in supplying the touchstone against which the value of domestic TV drama is tested, appraised and placed in the cultural hierarchy of contemporary media art forms. The enthusiastic embrace of US quality TV within academic and intellectual circles has in fact entailed disregard and rejection of the peculiar ‘tradition of quality’ that Italian TV drama has built over the years on the grounds of a public service ethos.

Keywords

quality televisionItalian television dramatelevision studiesminiseriesgood televisioninvisible television.

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1. Italian scholarship, for instance, has been moderately concerned with the issue (Sartori 1993; Lasagni and Richeri 1996; De Marzo 2009). In Britain a ‘rather unusual flurry of discussion about quality in television’ (Brunsdon 1990: 67) was occasioned in the early 1990s by the publication of the Government’s White Paper on Broadcasting. The much quoted Charlotte Brunsdon article ‘Problems with quality’ (1990) and the thoughtful booklet The Question of Quality, edited by Geoff Mulgan (1990), were produced on that occasion (see also Corner et al. 1994).

2. I quote several of them in the continuation of my article.

3. For an enlightening historical review of the quality debate in the early 2000s, I recommend Nelson (2006, 2007).

4. This has been interpreted in certain quarters as a return to an ‘elitist’ aesthetics, aimed at appeasing the anxieties for legitimation that have long obsessed both television and television scholars. Critics of the rise of television aesthetics question the assumption that, in order to achieve the status of art, television must reject being a popular art for the masses (see Kackman 2010; Newman and Levine 2011). Others take issue almost en bloc with the quality discourse, arguing that it comes at the price of our diminished capacity to appreciate the ordinariness of ‘television as a medium embedded within the everyday’ (Schwaab 2013:21). For a critique of the return of the

inTroducTion

A vibrant debate on questions of quality has taken place in recent years within television studies. In this article I reconsider the debate, pointing out the US-centric character of the currently accepted notion of ‘quality TV’ and the related lack of scholarly attention for alternative conceptions and achieve-ments of good television. I use the case of Italian TV drama to account for one among a range of coexisting alternatives, and to substantiate the claim that the ‘transatlantic romance’ (Brunsdon 2008) with American fiction can make a problematic impact on the appraisal and reputation of ‘traditions of quality’ that exist outside the United States. My aim is to indicate the neces-sity for television studies to adopt a more comprehensive perspective in the quality debate.

Discussion of the issue of quality has been more or less occasional or continuing among television scholars, depending on contexts and contin-gencies.1 But there is no doubt that never before has television studies been so much engaged with the argument as in the 2000s; this is testified by the unprecedented profusion of scholarly works, mostly articles,2 alongside edited collections and book-length monographs (Jancovich and Lyons 2003; Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004; McCabe and Akass 2007; Pujadas 2011) published over the last decade or so, that have been concerned with the vexed question of quality in television – whether or not the issue was addressed precisely in these terms.3

As is widely known, this new flurry of discussion was set in motion by the advent of the so-called ‘second golden age’ of American television (Thompson 1996), which expressed itself in a host of productions – specifically, prime time series – that were often innovative in many respects, not infre-quently of excellent craftsmanship, and soon labelled as ‘quality TV’. Although the trend for quality television had already been initiated in the 1980s by the big networks (Hill Street Blues, regarded as the pioneer series of the new trend, was broadcast by NBC from 1981–1987), it was the entrance of the fierce and competitive pay cable channels (HBO, Showtime, AMC, etc.) into the field of original production that helped to expand the phenomenon and to amplify its resonance on an national and international level. Series such as The Sopranos (1999–2007), The Wire (2002–2008), Six Feet Under (2001–2005), Mad Men (2007–), Breaking Bad (2008–2013), and others, acquired atten-tion, cult status, critical acclaim, nominations and awards. Together with CSI (2000–), Lost (2004–2010), Desperate Housewives (2004–2013) and several other networks series that have ‘translated the “quality” formula for the mainstream’ (McCabe and Akass 2008: 91), they restored lustre to the image of US television drama, and a new impetus to its consumption around the world; in particular, they asserted ‘television’s capacity to produce art’ (Jacobs 2011: 508).

It is worth emphasizing that for the first time in the (short) history of tele-vision studies, something like ‘telephilia’ – whose absence was perceptively observed by John Caughie a few decades ago – has begun to emerge within academic circles, which are no longer inhabited solely by individuals ‘who can see the seduction but are not seduced’ (1990: 54) by television.

In any case, since the 2000s television scholars have been engaged in an animated international debate that among other things has: affirmed the value of television, long disparaged even in the academic milieus; introduced aesthetics (Frith 2000; Jacobs 2001, 2006; Geraghty 2003; Cardwell 2006; Caughie 2006, 2010; Hills 2011; Mittel 2006) into the academic agenda;4 and


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élite/popular divide in the quality debate, see Dasgupta (2012).

5. I am referring in particular to the I. B. Tauris series ‘Reading Contemporary Television’, whose editors are Janet McCabe and Kim Akass. See also the series dedicated to ‘TV Classics’ by BFI publishing, and the ‘TV Milestone’ series published by Wayne State University Press. Worth mentioning also are edited collections such as The Essential HBO Reader (Edgerton and Jones 2008).

6. As soon as the diametrical opposition between American quality television and all the rest becomes self-evident, one consequence is that all the rest recedes into invisibility. Exceptions to this rule are British classics alongside some contemporary dramas (e.g. Doctor Who (1963–), Life on Mars (2006–2007)), and the very recent visibility of Scandinavian crime and political fiction (Forbrydelsen (2007–2009), Borgen (2010–2013)). In this regard I do not underestimate the availability factor: most national/local TV drama is not exported, or is otherwise inaccessible to international scholars due to language barriers. However, as long as US quality TV provides the exemplary model, other types of drama will have little chance to capture scholarly attention and will remain literally ‘unseen within academia’ (Mills 2010: 1).

encouraged the practice of multivocal and sophisticated analysis of televisual texts, which has enriched our knowledge and understanding of a remarkable ensemble of contemporary series.5

A US-centric ‘qUAlity tV’

Admittedly, quality television is a complex and contentious matter, further complicated by the multiple layers of meanings implied by a notion that calls into question aesthetics and ethics, production values and consumption pleas-ures, forms and contents, technology and culture.

And yet there seems to be a shared assumption, an almost axiomatic element that clearly informs and characterizes today’s debate on quality. I refer to American television’s almost universal embrace, or to be more specific the embrace of the American series, regarded as not merely the nec plus ultra of excellence but in fact the only corpus of televisual texts that is worthy of interest and academic investigation as ‘quality TV’ par excellence. I’m certainly not the first to indicate (and to express concern for) the predomi-nance of the American programmes in the quality debate and research agenda of contemporary television studies. Robin Nelson makes this point perfectly clear in affirming that ‘critical discourse on quality TV drama has been domi-nated by the celebration of American quality TV’, reasserting later on that ‘American quality is currently dominating the discourse’ (Nelson 2007: 41–42; see also Geraghty 2003; Cardwell 2007; Brunsdon 2008).

A monopoly of the sort maintained by American series on the academic agenda is of no benefit, whether for television studies or for the quality debate itself. In fact the almost exclusive focus on a textual corpus that is unique in its specificity entails for television studies the risk of endorsing a diametrical opposition: i.e. a dichotomy between a relatively limited selection of American series identified with quality television, and all the rest (which would auto-matically fall into the ‘non-quality’ category).6

This twofold and correlated process of selective inclusion and massive exclusion seems problematic and questionable, whatever meaning one might assign to the expression ‘quality TV’. I wish to call attention here to the seman-tic ambivalence of a term that in recent years has undergone a shift – in truth a mingling/conflation – of meanings and uses and has seen the proper original evaluative significance retreat into the background in favour of the purely descriptive meaning that has prevailed more recently in the lexicon of televi-sion studies. In other words, in present-day academic discourse, ‘to label some-thing quality television is more like making a generic classification’ (Cardwell 2007: 21) that applies (in principle without any evaluative intent) to products in which the constituent elements of a given genre are recognizably present. ‘It is comparable to agreeing that a certain film is a Western’, Cardwell affirms (2007: 21). In relation to this, Thompson has drawn up a list of twelve requisites that make up the profile of ‘quality television’ as a genuine genre (1996: 13–16).

Of course the descriptive use of a term like quality, which bears marked evaluative connotations, is not without problems and, especially, ambiguities. A greater or lesser degree of conflation between a generic classification and a critical evaluation that are encapsulated in one and the same word is in fact difficult to avoid: however much one might wish to keep the distinction firm and reassert that ‘quality TV’ should not be understood as an equivalent or a synonym of ‘good TV’ (Cardwell 2007). In actual fact this equivalence is the implicit assumption in most of the case studies dedicated to contemporary


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7. Stuart Hall has expressed a degree of dissatisfaction towards the saturation effect of an academic interest hegemonized by the same kind of texts; he went so far as to declare – during an interview that in fact revolved not around television but the present state of cultural studies – ‘I really cannot read another cultural analysis of … The Sopranos’ (MacCabe 2007: 29). I should clarify that the primary target of Hall’s criticism was not so much the excess but a certain type of textual analysis that is indeed capable of exploring the depths of the texts but in substance neglects to investigate their relationship with wider social formations and political and cultural tendencies. On textual analysis as an end in itself, see also Turner (2011).

8. The emergence and the impact of a neophiliac penchant within academia have been more recently indicated and discussed by Ulla Carlsson and Matt Hills. Carlsson has lamented that contemporary researchers ‘tend to develop a nose for trends’ (2007: 226); Hills has coined the phrase ‘just in time scholarship’ to account for the unconditional priority now accorded by scholars to newer forms of television (2010). In this connection it may be worth recalling the warning expressed by Sonia Livingstone, albeit in a different discursive context: ‘So, what is our role? Cheerleader for change?’ (2010: 14).

American series, whether or not carried out by American scholars. Cardwell, who has written very convincingly about the importance of preserving the analytical and critical distinction between ‘quality TV’ and ‘good TV’, acknowl-edges that scholars who deal with American series seem barely troubled by this problem and are ‘more willing to assume that American quality television is likely to warrant serious critical attention and that American quality television is also good television’ (2007: 24, emphasis added).

The semantic shift of the word ‘quality’ from the evaluative to the descrip-tive side does not contradict the widespread tendency of present-day televi-sion studies to concentrate attention, analytical skills and discourses on a small corpus of programmes.7 Since they are associated with a genre defined signifi-cantly as being ‘quality’, such programmes achieve scholarly worthiness, and receive academic assessments that are not infrequently consonant with the accolades by television critics, the enthusiasm of the fans, the harvest of the Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and awards.

That so many scholars should have a predilection for the American ‘quality TV’ is in many ways understandable. There is no need for us to share what-ever amount of populism resonates in the voices (though they are a minority) that criticize the advent and celebration of an ‘elitist aesthetic’ in television, in order to recognize that viewers with a considerable cultural capital and aesthetic sensibility – which is precisely, if not exclusively, the case with intel-lectuals and academics – are among the most liable to feel attracted, interested and involved when confronted with the artistically and culturally ambitious exemplars of present-day ‘quality TV’.

This is not to question the right of scholars to concentrate on the televi-sion series whose artistic excellence or innovative audacity they acknowledge and admire (conferring on them their academic seal). The preferences and pleasures that structure our relationships with television can favour deeper and more enlightened approaches to the texts and make them an object of research and impassioned analysis. Nevertheless we should be careful about adopting research agendas and aesthetic and cultural indicators that are too consonant with our own tastes. I am referring here to the models of pref-erence and valorization which an academic community shares at a certain moment in time and which to a greater or lesser extent may be dictated by the spirit of the age. Scholars, amongst other things, are a selected ‘taste community’ (Hills 2010), whose hierarchies of value are not immune from a recurring fascination with the newness. To say it better, they are not immune from the ‘modernist obsession for innovation and novelty’ (Mulgan 1990: 18), which so often makes many of us disposed to share, and help to spread, the hype that accompanies phenomena and processes of evolution and change – for which positions more balanced between celebration and problematization, between support and criticism, would be better suited.8 And while a histori-cally situated fascination is in no way ‘natural’, it happens that academic models of preference and valorization help for their part to ‘naturalize’ hier-archies of relevance and value that soon become crystallized into unquestion-able canons. As Roberta Pearson stated recently:

If such a process of canonization is inevitable […] I’d like it to be driven by something other than the tastes of television scholars, who are overwhelm-ingly the white, middle class upmarket audience at which many of the programs in these series are directed by their producers and distributors.

(2012)



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9. The digital and satellite networks have also helped to valorise the contemporary American series, giving them priority access to the selected environment of the narrowcast television, and even screening the most hyped programmes on prestige-conferring movie channels (this is for instance the case with Game of Thrones (2011–)).

10. The decade of renaissance for the Italian TV drama has not fulfilled the high expectations of creative growth it had raised; thus the criticism is possibly accentuated by this dissatisfaction.

11. A further critical effect resides in the drive to imitate US models (Lucherini 2010). In fact, by limiting themselves to the superficial adoption of American templates, various US-inspired series have resulted in failure.

12. According to the television historian and critic Aldo Grasso, for example, the American quality series deserves praise for turning TV into a ‘good teacher’ (2007), thus redeeming the medium from the heavily negative stigma that marked it from its beginnings. This is precisely the sort of argument that is contested by those who see in the rise of the quality TV the signs of an elitist shift, prompted by networks that have strategically chosen to cater to tastes of selected circles of cultured and demanding viewers (Newman and Levine 2012).

Furthermore, the naturalization and universalization of standards of quality and criteria of evaluation calibrated on the best American TV drama preclude television studies from recognizing and acknowledging what counts as quality and value in televisual traditions and cultures outside the American location. Italian TV drama is a case in point.

The ‘TradiTion of qualiTy’ in iTalian TeleVision draMa

The Italian case provides a telling example of the role played by American television in supplying the touchstone against which the value of national television drama is tested, appraised and situated in the cultural hierarchy of contemporary media art forms. US drama in the Italian television market has for decades been characterized by a ‘status imbalance’ between high quantity and low repute. Although a huge amount of American TV drama has been imported since the 1980s (Buonanno 2012), such programmes were regarded at most as reliable and well-tested industrial products, suitable to fill the schedules and deliver easy popular entertainment to undemanding viewers, rather than as quality models. Seldom were US imports screened in prime time during the 1990s and earliest 2000s, when domestic drama experienced a phase of renaissance that was greatly informed by a proud sense of standing in antithetical relation to American fare. In particular, US drama was dismissed by academics and cultural élites (unless it was recovered in the name of the postmodern breakdown between high and low art and culture).

This situation changed dramatically in the space of less than a decade, as the new and innovative television drama series and serials originating from the US were able to gain audiences, better positions in the schedules, and, more importantly, a reputation for quality that had always been denied to American drama. Nowhere was the reception of US ‘quality’ TV more enthu-siastic than within the academic community and the intellectual circles, which greatly helped to confer cultural legitimation both on the texts and audiences of American seriality.9 To the extent it has successfully challenged a deep-seated prejudice against US drama – thus releasing viewers and fans from the shame of uncultured pleasures, as at the time of Dallas (1978–1991) (Alasuutari 1992) – such legitimation has been highly beneficial.

However the acknowledgment of the cultural and aesthetic value of US quality TV has not erased or undermined the antithetical relation between Italian and American drama: a total reversal of polarities has rather occurred. In fact, the celebration of American series has gone hand in hand with a wide-spread tendency to undervalue and denigrate Italian television drama more or less en bloc. Italian TV drama has become a constant object of contempt and criticism from commentators and intellectuals,10 and is looked down upon by upmarket viewers (such as urban, well-educated young adults) because of its inadequacy in comparison with the creative audacity and aesthetic quality of the series produced in the US.11 For their part, Italian television scholars manifest an unconditional bias in favour of American series,12 as is testified by a number of books, edited collections and special issues on Lost, House (2004–2012), The Sopranos and more (see Maio 2004; Monteleone 2005; Grasso 2007; Izzo and Scarpino 2008; La Rocca et al. 2010; Andò 2011).

Engagement with programmes from beyond national borders is certainly welcome, and should be encouraged to broaden the scope of scholarship, challenging the narrow insularity of what Jason Jacobs has aptly defined ‘a very municipal sense of the medium’ (2011: 506). Jacobs is probably right


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13. A further example: in the monograph issue that the French journal of communication studies Réseaux recently (January 2011) dedicated to televisual seriality, the only locally produced television drama under consideration was the soap Plus Belle La Vie (2004). All the others were American series.

14. A ‘quagmire of conformity’, according to the Italian scholar and former television scriptwriter Sergio Brancato (2013: 125).

15. See, for instance, reviews and comments posted on http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/nov/09/inpector-montalbano-sicily-morse. Accessed 15 March 2013.

16. The cult status soon achieved by the series, which ran for two seasons, owes something also to its pedigree as the first Italian drama aimed at niche audiences of satellite subscription channels. Romanzo Criminale received its consecration when rumours were spread that HBO had acquired the rights.

17. I want to make clear that the general television audience is scarcely affected by this syndrome of condescendence, criticism and rejection. TV drama produced by public television, in particular, still achieves fairly remarkable results in term of ratings and market share.

when he asserts the principle that ‘paying scholarly attention to a genre and a form that is already privileged does not necessarily mean that others will be neglected or deprived of attention’ (2011: 508). However, facts tell a different story, as the privilege accorded to American drama seems to entail neglect and disregard for other genres and forms, especially home-grown drama. It is worth pointing out that this phenomenon extends far beyond Italy. According to the findings of a study carried out in Germany, the ‘academic recipients’ of US quality drama reject German TV series, which are deemed ‘thematically average, emotionally cliché, flatly funny, narratively foreseeable, as well as aesthetically boring’ (Kumpf 2012: 487). Even in the United Kingdom, which has traditionally enjoyed a strong reputation for its quality drama, ‘British academics in television studies’, as pointed out by Christine Geraghty, ‘have seemed resolute in their turn to US fiction’ (Geraghty 2010: 82). Signs of a similar turn are visible elsewhere.13

‘It is rather hard not to agree that the quality of Italian television leaves something to be desired’ (Kuipers 2012: 601), a foreign observer stated recently. In fact it is hard not to agree that Italian televisual story-telling has for some time now entered a rather stagnant creative phase,14 the object of severe criti-cism from which only a handful of programmes have been immune. Among the few exceptions is the long running series Il Commissario Montalbano/Inspector Montalbano (1999–), which has been widely exported and has even suited the demanding tastes of British viewers;15 and the domestically hyped16 and internationally well received Romanzo Criminale/Crime Novel (2008–2010), the story of the rise to power during the 1970s of a criminal gang that reigned in Rome for almost two decades.

However, just as ‘quality TV’ is not necessarily synonymous with good television, unsteady or uneven quality does not necessarily testify to the cultural and artistic inconsistency of an entire story-telling system, explain-ing the lack of interest by scholars, the disparaging attitude of critics and the indiscriminate rejection by elite groups.17 Indeed, the answer to the question of whether there can be good television and good television drama even outside demanding standards of quality should unhesitatingly be positive – but a trend in that direction within television studies has yet to fully come to fruition. ‘Let us abandon quality television and embrace good television’, Cardwell (2007: 34) was the first to exhort us.

Nevertheless, if the same selective approach adopted for the American series were to be applied to Italian productions as well – i.e. restraining the field to a specific genre and to a cluster of programmes that best epitomize it – it would be easily perceived that Italian television drama has itself constructed over the years its own ‘tradition of quality’, in which both the features of a genre and a concept of good television may clearly be recognised.

I am introducing the expression ‘tradition of quality’ precisely to evoke that ‘certain tendency’ of post-World War II French cinema which François Truffaut, at that time a young cinema critic, made the target of his vitriolic polemic in a famous article in the early 1950s, regarded as the manifesto of the nouvelle vague (1954). Truffaut imputed to the French tradition of quality – which was represented by highly regarded and prize-winning films and directors – cultural conformism and aesthetic academism, a recourse to liter-ary sources just as repetitive as it was unfaithful, and a complacent indulgence towards conventional and formulaic modes of narration and portrayals of reality. In opposition to this ‘cinéma de papa’, he would invoke the audacity and the experimentalism of a new auteur cinema, to the point of upholding


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18. Forexample,interveninginatalkshowthatairedon20October2012onthethirdpublicchannel,therenownedfilmdirectorPaoloVirzìdefinedItaliantelevisiondramaas‘camomileteafortheelderly’.Hewentontosaythat,incomparisonwiththeirAmericancounterparts,Italianseriesaretheworstintheworld.

19. Iamawarethatthisstatementappearstocontradictthedefinitionof‘longformat’thatisusedintheAnglo-Americancontexttorefertominiseries(seeforinstanceMcMurria2003).ButIratherconcurwithPaulKerr,whotalkedabout‘shortformserials’(1982:8).

the impossibility of a co-existence between the two opposed tendencies. Transposed to the present-day televisual scene, an analogous dispute can be seen in process in Italy, where a call for an innovative turn (which is certainly necessary and opportune) is likewise accompanied by indiscrimi-nate and disparaging appraisals of the backward and boring home-grown television drama, and by a combination of scorn and intolerance towards the special bond that such television drama has established and maintains with older viewers.18

The tradition of quality in Italian TV drama goes back to the inception of television itself, in the mid 1950s. This means that it has originated and taken root in the historical and cultural humus of public service television, with its ethical commitment to providing a universal service aimed at enhancing public knowledge and education. Though this sounds quite unfashionable nowadays, the idea of the quality drama as a narrative primarily intended to spread knowledge and awareness (about culture, history, social reality, etc.) has stood the test of time. Furthermore, this has survived to some extent in commercial television too.

This tradition is premised on the basic conception that quality in TV drama is rooted in an alliance, an ‘elective affinity’ as it were, between narrative form and thematic content, which takes shape with the miniseries format. This ‘media hybrid’ (Edgerton 1985), a formula on the borderline between cinema and television, holds a special place in the history of Italian television drama: it incorporates Italian televisual culture’s long-lasting and enduring resist-ance towards seriality, regarded as the epitome of the ‘popular’. In fact this deep-seated aversion to seriality has been for decades a distinctive feature of public television in Italy; and has been since its beginning the key difference between domestic drama and its American counterpart. The short format19 of the miniseries, which in Italy is preferably produced in two parts, therefore holds a distinguished position on the axis of cultural prestige, far removed from soaps, telenovelas and long-running series.

It is understood that cinema lies at the opposite extreme of televis-ual seriality. And it was not by chance that the Italian miniseries – after its initial phase, when it sought to achieve cultural ennoblement by adopting a theatrical style – soon aimed at emulating the cinema with a view to ridding itself of the status of ‘daughter of a lesser medium’. This is not dissimilar to American ‘quality TV’ which, according to Thompson (1996: 14), boasts a cinematographic pedigree among its primary requisites. The high level of financial investment, the promotional campaigns, the lavish mise-en-scène, the shooting on location, the wide appeal of the cast that frequently includes actors from the big screen, both national and international: all these features raise the miniseries to the rank of a cinematographic work. And it has now become common practice to put the miniseries on the same level as the cinema through the opening credits, especially when the directors are (as often happens) well-known personalities with film-making training and expertise: these often use the flattering authorial attribution ‘a film by …’. A complete consecration in this sense took place in 2003, when the six-ep-isode miniseries La Meglio Gioventù/The Best of Youth (2003) – directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, a renowned exponent of Italian ‘engaged cinema’ – was screened at the 56th Cannes Festival; it obtained recognition and film prizes (best ‘film’ in the ‘un certain régard’ section) and was subsequently included by the New York Times in its list of the best films distributed in the United States during 2005.


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20. AspointedoutbyRobinNelson,itisalsothecaseinBritainthatanydramaserialtodaythatissuitablefortheinternationalmarketisunlikelytoberealized‘withoutco-productionfunding’(Nelson2008:49).

21. Hereisaselectionoftitlesfromthe2000s:Perlasca: Un Eroe Italiano/Perlasca: An Italian Hero(2002:musicbytheOscarwinnerEnnioMorricone); Il Dottor Zhivago/Doctor Zhivago (2002:BAFTAAwardsnominationforthedirectorGiacomoCampiottiin2003);Augusto/August(2003:leadingactorsPeterO’TooleandCharlotteRampling);Papa Giovanni Paolo II/Pope John Paul II(2005:leadingactorJohnVoight);Guerra e Pace/War and Peace (2007:scriptwritertheOscarnomineeEnricoMedioli);Caravaggio(2007:cinematographertheOscarwinnerVittorioStoraro);Coco Chanel(2008:GoldenGlobeandEmmyAwardsnominationforShirleyMacLainein2009); Pinocchio (2009:leadingactorBobHoskins);Titanic(2012:awardforthebestEuropeanco-production,MonteCarloFestival2012).

22. However,inItalythefailureofaminiseriesisanuncommonevent.Seasonafterseason,theminiseriesconfirmsitselfthemostsuccessfulvehicleforItalianTVdrama.

23. InthewakeoftheenthusiasmforDownton Abbey(2010-),DavidBiancullihasrecentlywritten:‘…weshouldbeembracing,notignoring,theminiseriesform.It’stimeAmericannetworksadmittedthat,bygivinguponlong-formTV,they’ve

The miniseries also encompasses a potential for internationalization, which proves particularly attractive for a country like Italy that has not yet succeeded in carving out a significant role in the export of domestic televis-ual product. This potential is likely to be actualized through co-productions,20 which have been constantly present, even if in relatively small number, in the extensive historical catalogue of Italian miniseries.21 And even when expecta-tions of international distribution are not fulfilled, a co-produced miniseries constitutes a value-added resource, because it attracts and flatters the Italian public with an offer of high-budget television drama that makes up for and redeems the cost-saving, mediocre production values of the greater part of current Italian television drama.

But whatever the type of production, the miniseries seems to possess the inimitable and exclusive advantage that broadcasters and marketers define as the network’s ‘radiance’: a sparkling halo that stands the test of time even independently of ratings.22 It is worth emphasizing here that the consideration and use of the miniseries as the ‘lighthouses’ of the networks (Copple Smith 2009: 147) is far from being an obsolete practice in which Italian television is lagging behind. If American television has to serve as a touchstone, then the rebirth experienced by the miniseries in the innovative environment of American narrowcasting – where it has now migrated and is used strategi-cally by the niche networks to build up a brand, a cultural status and special events – cannot be overlooked (McMurria 2003; Copple Smith 2009). HBO itself, the standard-bearer of ‘quality TV’, has pioneered the return of the miniseries, reviving with its ambitious projects a form that until now had been abandoned by the big networks,23 and allowing it to regain ‘its status as provider of quality content’ (Weissmann 2012: 115).

This mention of ‘quality content’ leads directly to the narrative mate-rial that is traditionally associated with the miniseries, and is integral to the interrelationship between form and content upon which the Italian quality drama is predicated. Displaying narratives that revolve around serious, rele-vant and ‘engaged’ themes and subjects is the ambition and the prerogative of the Italian miniseries, which draws much of its inspiration from historical, biographical, religious and literary sources, as well as from current social problems: in other words, it uses material characterized by a high degree of cultural respectability.24 Whereas literary adaptations – the staple of drama production during the two decades of the public service monopoly – have become rare with time, Italian TV drama has increasingly cultivated reality-based genres and topics: biographies, historical events, and social and political issues have been the subject matter of a host of miniseries (Buonanno 2012). I will limit myself to refer here to just a few representative examples. Firstly, La Piovra 1-10/The Power of Mafia (1984–2001), the most successful Italian TV drama export of all time, which is credited for spreading awareness of the mafia’s deep penetration of the fabric of Italian society at the time when the process of criminal infiltration had not yet been brought into the public arena. Secondly, Perlasca: Un Eroe Italiano/Perlasca: An Italian Hero (2002), about the life-saving endeavours (a mix of courage and imposture) of the ‘Italian Schindler’, who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews from being extermi-nated by the Nazis in the winter 1944–1945. Thirdly, as already mentioned, The Best of Youth (2003), a reconstruction of almost 40 years of troubled socio-political Italian history, from the devastating Florence flood in mid-1960s to the ‘bribesville’ scandal in the 1990s, and beyond, following the life of a family whose members are in different ways protagonists or victims of history.



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wandered down the wrong path’ (2013).

24. I am obviously well aware that drawing inspiration from already reputed cultural sources has often been regarded in a rather grim fashion within television scholarship. However, whereas on the one hand this testifies to television’s difficulty in gaining cultural and artistic reputation in its own terms, on the other hand incursions into territories of other cultural and artistic forms may prove to be fruitful and hybridizing practices, not to be stigmatized just because they pursue aims of cultural legitimation.

Fourthly, Il Giudice Borsellino/Judge Borsellino (2004), about the investigative work of the anti-mafia pool established in Sicily during the 1980s, and the lives of the heroic ‘State servants’ Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone, both victims of deadly mafia attacks. Lastly, Volare/Flying (2013), a miniseries that re-enacts the rise to celebrity of the versatile artist Domenico Modugno – globally renowned for the song ‘Volare’/‘In the Blue, Painted Blue’, the winner of two Grammy awards in 1958 – to represent a vibrant Italian society, eager to spread its wings towards the ‘economic miracle’ of the 1960s.

Endowed with a high degree of artistic respectability by virtue of its simi-larity with the cinema, and characterized by an eventful narrative that sets it apart from ‘ordinary’ television drama, the miniseries format also benefits from the ennobling associations that come from its historical, biographical and social contents, and thus imbued with the cultural legitimacy attributed to serious, cultured and demanding subjects. Hence the (constructed) elec-tive affinity between a quasi-cinematographic form, and narrative material of acknowledged relevance, allows for a definition of ‘good’ television that adheres to the basic principles of Italian tradition of quality.

Even the most inflexible critics of Italian drama might perhaps be willing to acknowledge the value of the selected examples I have provided above, and a handful of others. However, these exemplars of good (and mostly good quality) drama would be regarded in all probability as isolated exceptions to the rule, rather than as achievements – admittedly, among the best – within a genre that has given rise to a large corpus of good dramas.

The tradition of quality in Italian TV drama has been built on a number of features: short narrative form, cinematographic pedigree, higher production costs, a potential for internationalization, a ‘must-see’ event status, reality-based subjects, the targeting of a general public. It is worth pointing out that some components of this generic profile, which is unquestionably ‘classic’ and in a sense truly traditional, correspond substantially to those usually attributed to American ‘quality TV’: for instance, the ambition to distinguish itself from ordinary television programming (and if possible from television tout court), the aspirations towards realism, the predilection for important subject matter, the intent to achieve and boast the status of a cinematographic work, and the recourse to artists ‘whose reputations were made in other classier media, like film’ (Thompson 1996: 14).

It should be understood that the differences are equally numerous – among them, distancing oneself from seriality and critical disapproval rather than acclaim on the Italian side – but the main dividing line is without doubt the audience to be addressed. Thompson writes that ‘quality TV’ ‘attracts an audience with blue chip demographics. The upscale, well-educated, urban-dwelling, young viewers advertisers so desire to reach tend to make up a much larger percentage of the audience of these shows than of other kinds of programs’ (Thompson 1996: 14). By contrast, Italian television drama’s ‘tradition of quality’, which was built on and remains ingrained within the cultural logics and communicative strategies of public service broadcasting, is characterized by its success with the extended and composite formations of the general viewing public. It should more appro-priately be defined as a tradition of ‘quality mainstream TV’.

Without having to adhere to a complacent and populist attitude towards the ‘masses’ as against the ‘classy’, it may be plausibly maintained that the generalist posture of the Italian ‘tradition of quality’ turns out to be especially unfashion-able, almost like an original sin or a fatal flaw to be redeemed, with critics, intel-lectuals and academics, who seem infatuated to a greater or lesser degree with


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the phenomena of differentiation and customization of programmes for niche audiences that are rampant in today’s media environment (Schwaab 2013).

The ‘tradition of quality’ in Italian TV drama is certainly vulnerable to critical appraisals not unlike those levelled by Truffaut at French films in the post-World War II era: criticisms can be made of its repeatedly formulaic and conventional narratives, its desire to please everyone, its avoidance of contro-versy and aesthetic experimentation, its sin of didacticism and oversimpli-fication, its yielding to hagiographic and ‘feel-good’ temptations, and more besides. But the fact remains that this same tradition (as open to criticism as any other) has produced over the years several examples of good televi-sion, which can be included among the best TV dramas made up till now, owing to their good-to-high standards of craftsmanship, their compelling dramatization of the subject matter and their contribution to the knowledge and memory of Italian history, society and culture. Nonetheless contemporary Italian TV drama and especially the ‘tradition of quality’, regarded by its many critics as worn out and superseded, is ‘repudiated within scholarship for a transatlantic romance with US quality drama’ (Brunsdon 2008: 133, emphasis added). Charlotte Brunsdon’s comment in relation to British scholarship fits perfectly with the current Italian situation.

Until not so long ago, as I have indicated, programmes from the United States were mostly regarded by Italian broadcasters, intellectuals, critics, creative talents and cultured viewers as the ‘transatlantic other’, in the face of which Italian television drama stood as a bastion of quality and identity. The transatlantic other has now given way to the transatlantic romance, while a process of othering has affected home-grown drama. Of course, there is nothing wrong with cultivating such a romance, the more so as American series – and not solely those that fall into the category of ‘quality TV’ – can be admirable and can raise interest, devotion and acclaim. At the same time, ‘other’ traditions and accomplishments of quality and good television outside the United States deserve academic attention, understanding and contextual-ized critical appraisal. As television scholars, we are required to be pluralist and to acknowledge and welcome, rather than neglect, the existence of ‘a range of different and often contradictory qualities’ (Mulgan 1990: 8).

In his latest books Graeme Turner has repeatedly pointed out that ‘the answer to the question “what is television?” very much depends on where you are’ (Turner and Tay 2010: 8; Turner 2012: 15). Turner’s cogent call to reconnect television to the differentiated plurality of its locations, rather than regarding the American market ‘as standing in exemplary relation to the rest of the world’ (Turner and Tay 2010: 33), lends itself to be applied to quality discourse too.

In order for the quality debate to assume a more comprehensive perspec-tive, it would seem an opportune time for television studies to challenge the postulation that it is only American series that are worthy of academic atten-tion, and to accommodate the assumption that different conceptions and achievements of quality exist in different television locations and cultures. And they need to be recognized, interrogated and evaluated in their own terms and contexts.

Acknowledgements

A first version of this article was delivered at the Conference ‘Que-ce que c’est une télévision de qualitè?’ held in Paris in September 2012.

I wish to thank the anonymous referees for their constructive comments and helpful suggestions to improve the manuscript.



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Television Programmes

Augusto/August (2003, Italy: Rai Uno).Borgen (2010–2013, Denmark: DR1).Breaking Bad (2008–2013, United States: AMC).Caravaggio (2007, Italy: Rai Uno).Coco Chanel (2008, Italy: Rai Uno).CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–, United States: CBS).Dallas (1978–1991, United States: CBS).Desperate Housewives (2004–2012, United States: ABC).Doctor Who (1963–, United Kingdom: BBC).Downton Abbey (2010–, United Kingdom: ITV).Forbrydelsen/The Killing (2007–2009, Denmark: DR1).Game of Thrones (2011–, United States: HBO).Guerra e Pace/War and Peace (2007, Italy: Rai Uno).Hill Street Blues (1981–1987, United States: NBC).House (2004–2012, United States: FOX).Il Commissario Montalbano/Inspector Montalbano (1999–, Italy, Rai Due and Rai Uno).Il Dottor Zhivago/Doctor Zhivago (2002, Italy: Canale 5). Il Giudice Borsellino/Judge Borsellino (2004, Italy: Canale 5).La Meglio gioventù/The Best of Youth (2003, Italy: Rai Uno).La Piovra/The Power of Mafia (1984–2001, Italy: Rai Uno). Life on Mars (2006–2007, United Kingdom: BBC One).Lost (2004–2010, United States: ABC).Mad Men (2007–, United States: AMC).Papa Giovanni/Pope John (2002, Italy: Rai Uno). Papa Giovanni Paolo II/Pope John Paul II (2005, Italy: Rai Uno). Perlasca: Un Eroe Italiano/Perlasca: An Italian Hero (2002, Italy: Rai Uno).Pinocchio (2009, Italy: Rai Uno).Plus Belle la Vie /More Beautiful Life (2004–, France: France 3).Romanzo Criminale/Crime Novel (2008–2010, Italy: SKY).Six Feet Under (2001–2005, United States: HBO).The Sopranos (1999–2007, United States: HBO).Titanic (2012, Italy: Rai Uno).Volare/Flying (2013, Italy: Rai Uno).The Wire (2002–2008, United States: HBO).

suggesTed ciTaTion

Buonanno, M. (2013), ‘The transatlantic romance of television studies and the “tradition of quality” in Italian TV drama’, Journal of Popular Television, 1: 2, pp. 175–189, doi: 10.1386/jptv.1.2.175_1

conTribuTor deTails

Milly Buonanno is Professor of Television Studies at La Sapienza University of Roma. She is Director of the Observatory of Italian TV Drama and Chair of the research programme GEMMA (GEnder and Media MAtter). Her research and teaching interests include media theory, television story-telling, gender and media, journalism. She is the author or the editor of more than twenty books and her writings have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, English and French. Her recent publications include Italian TV Drama and Beyond. Stories



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from the Soil, Stories from the Sea (Intellect 2012) and The Age of Television (Intellect, 2008). She is the co-editor with Herman Gray and Toby Miller of Television Studies Handbook (Sage, forthcoming).

Contact: La Sapienza University of Roma, Via Salaria 113 – 00187 Roma, Italy.E-mail: [email protected]

Milly Buonanno has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.


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