italian television

a guide to tv shows in rome

Italian TV is the pits. Actually, as I'm not American I've never been very sure about that expression - Should it be spelt with two 't's as in 'pitts'? Frankly, Italian TV to me is worth three 't's of anybody's pits, it's that bad, really!

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General TV Overview
Telejournalism
Commercials
Primetime
Kid's TV
Movies
Nature
Drama

italian tv in general...

appears to be underfunded. There is simply a lack of money with which to produce decent programmes.
We think the other problem is an important cultural difference - Italians prefer talking amongst themselves to almost any other activity, therefore they don't rely or expect too much from the artificial entertainment medium of television. Anthropologically speaking, this is probably a good point in their favour, but to the tourist or expat who wants to kill an evening in Rome if it's raining outside, it means you're in for a night of bad TV.

Italian TV screens a lot of pretty dreadful soaps mostly bought in from America, or worse, South America, and dubbed into Italian. Italians never subtitle anything to screen in its original language. As almost all their TV scheduling features product bought in from America and England, subtitling it all would mean the public would have to continually read, rather than watch TV. But this is of course bad news for us tourists and expatriates here, as subtitling would certainly allow us to enjoy what little there was worth watching on TV in Italy, as well as improving our Italian language skills. As it is, we can only laugh at the caricatured stereotypes allotted to the American actors by the inane voices they are dubbed with - Leading women are always given a silky sexy voice, and leading men are always given a deep, booming commanding voice. The dubbing itself also always sounds hideously overacted, especially in the children's cartoons and thus I think it would be fair to say, that in whatever measure a society allows the characters it sees on television to colour their own personalities, this overacted overdubbing of movies will correspondingly see itself expressed in larger-than-life speech mannerisms adopted by Italians who have been watching TV manufactured in this way since birth. The popular image of the bubbly babbling Italian is perhaps not so much a product of Italian culture itself, but more a product of a false idea Italians have of how the rest of the world really speaks, and a desire to conform to that 'ideal'. Thinking of the popular advertising slogan used by the British Insurance company a few years ago - "We won't make a drama out of a crisis"; In fact, Italians do just that, indeed they generally seek to make a crisis out of every drama, and their approach to the dubbing of foreign cinematic material reflects this. Italians as a race are in two words, ham actors, no matter if they have never been anywhere near a stage or movie-camera, they avidly seek fame and the wringing of a drama worthy of public display from each moment of their everyday lives, from cradle to grave. Their children are invariably doted upon and conditioned to seize centre stage as their natural conversational stance at every occasion. Precocity is seen as normal behaviour for an Italian child, and while the intellectual or technical quality of Italian television leaves much to be desired, there is an indisputable aura of self-confidence and graceful posture to everyone who appears on Italian TV, whether they be the professional presenter or the lowliest member of the public in a studio audience. Italians don't clamour to be seen on TV as the English do - They don't regard fame as something only attainable through performing on television - For them, life itself is a performance and TV is only perceived as a tool by which some may reach a wider audience than they already have in real life, with those fluid tongue-trilling accents and wildly waving hands that accompany the natural everyday oratory of every boy, girl , man, woman and octogenarian in this most naturally exhibitionist of all countries.

primetime italian tv...

is strictly for the brain-dead.
There is a simple production formula for any popular Italian TV show:
1. Get a large studio.
2. Fill it with chairs.
3. Invite a studio audience from the public to put them backsides in those chairs
4. Schedule two or three minor celebrities
5. Hire a compere and a troupe of dancing girls in bikinis.
6. Let the celebs sing while the girls dance and between numbers let the audience ask as many questions as they like to the celeb through the compere.

The end result is utter schmaltz!
Of course, that's the formula for most variety shows around the world, but the thing is, variety shows are almost the only thing Italian TV ever puts on. Italians just LOVE to talk. They can talk the hind legs off a mule, and most of all they like to see themselves talking on TV - Listen - if an Italian show isn't a soap, a drama or a movie, then it's guaranteed to have a massive studio audience every time. Every TV programme has to be conducted like some kind of discussion or get together.

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