TV Italian Style

Send us Fan Mail Sarà capitato anche a voi di avere una musica in testa, sentire una specie di orchestra suonare suonare suonare suonare Zum zum zum zum zum, Zum zum zum zum... Well, has it ever happened to you? Have you found yourself humming or singing a song that's got stuck in your head? And how many times has that song been from a television show you were watching? Television theme songs...

Send us Fan Mail In this penultimate episode of the podcast, we're talking about young people and Italian variety television. How were young people portrayed on Italian television screens? Were there variety television shows that were aimed specifically at an audience of young people? Did young people appear on Italian television in this period? How were the 1950s different to the 1960s and a...

Send us Fan Mail Across the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Italian television played host to a series of popular and well-loved stars that hailed from outside of Italy. On the podcast, we've already talked about how stars like the Kessler twins, Henri Salvador, and Lola Falana brought something new and different to Italian television screens, a difference that was, in the case of the Kesslers and L...

Send us Fan Mail Signore, signori, today's episode focuses on 'il primo ragazzo della porta accanto dello spettacolo italiano [che] irruppe con quel ciuffo un po’ malandrino, con quell’aria gioviale, simpatico, di amico con cui tirar mattina, nel cinema e nel varietà made in Italy del dopoguerra [...]. Fu una rivoluzione nel varietà, non era un comico buffo, non aveva trucchi visibili su...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we're talking about ‘la coppia piu amata della tv’. Ten years after their deaths, the Corriere della sera newspaper ran a feature article to mark the fifty years our two stars were together and the impact they had on television. Here’s how the article opened: '«Se mi guardo indietro non ho pentimenti. Dovessi ricominciare, farei esattamente tutto quello...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we're going back to the 1950s and to a series that played an important role in establishing the nature of variety television in this period, and the expectations of Italian television more broadly. That series is Un, due, tre . Hosted for the majority of episodes by comedians Ugo Tognazzi and Raimondo Vianello, the show appealed to audiences thanks to its reg...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, my virtual guest star is one of the four so-called founding fathers of Italian entertainment television: Enzo Tortora. He was an important star right from the start of the varietà , hosting series like Primo applauso in 1956, Telematch in 1957, and Voci e volti della fortuna again in 1957. In 1965, Enzo would become host of La Domenica sportiva and Giochi senza fr...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we’re celebrating a show that, in the words of television critic G in the Corriere della sera newspaper, ‘mostra uno standard superiore alla media della trasmissioni del genere’. It’s another one of my favourites but it's also one of the cornerstones of the varietà televisivo and a series that is responsible for establishing a certain successful variety show...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode of the podcast, I'm really pleased to be joined by researcher and historian Jessica L. Harris to talk about a really interesting aspect of Italian variety television during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: the representation of race on the small screen. And whilst television in this period in Italy was multicultural, and we’ve seen that already on the podcast as w...

Send us Fan Mail Lucia Mannucci. Virgilio Savona. Giovanni "Tata" Giacobetti. Felice Chiusano. The Quartetto Cetra, so much more than just an 'Italian jazz vocal quartet' as they're often described online. The Quartetto's success covers the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s, and spans radio, theatre, and, of course, television. But what is at the h...

Send us Fan Mail On 7 June 2024, the television presenter and host Pippo Baudo celebrated his 88th birthday. Here's how the Italian media marked the occasion: Tanti auguri a Pippo Baudo, che il 7 giugno compie 88 anni. Una colonna della Rai e della nostra televisione, il conduttore che ha spaziato in tutti i generi, colto e appassionato. Con Mike Bongiorno, Enzo Tortora e Corrado, moschettier...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we're focusing on one particular star who burst onto Italian television screens in 1962 and who was introduced to television viewers by Radiocorriere in a rather particular way: Ha cominciato presto a «far notizia» per i giornali; e il motivo - a guardar bene le fotografie di queste pagine - è il meno plausibile. Era l'agosto del 1945, i Pavone abitavano...

Send us Fan Mail Raimondo Vianello and Sandra Mondaini. Raffaele Pisu. Gino Bramieri. Walter Chiari. Ave Ninchi. Paolo Panelli. Bice Valori. Aldo Fabrizi. Alighiero Noschese. Cochi e Renato. Just some of the famous faces of the varietà televisivo of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s who were responsible for one of the most important aspects of these programmes: making the viewers laugh. In an article fr...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we're focusing on one particular star of varietà  who has been described as the queen of Saturday night variety television and as the face and voice of Italian TV. That star is Mina. According to her online biography, Mina is 'la più grande voce italiana di sempre. Ma non solo. Per gli italiani Mina è un’icona al pari di altri grandi “marchi”che parlano...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we're focusing on one particular varietà and on its two hosts: musician and composer Lelio Luttazzi and actor Alberto Lupo. The variety series in question is Teatro 10 , directed by Antonello Falqui and broadcast in 1964 and again in 1971 and 1972. According to Radiocorriere in 1964, Teatro 10 is a different type of variety show: Teatro 10 non è un complesso...

Send us Fan Mail In January 1961, the cover of television and radio listings Radiocorriere featured two stars who would during the decade become important figures for variety television in Italy, coming to represent the golden age of television from the 1960s. The cover is described thus: In Francia le chiamano ormai, semplicemente, le "gemelle di Parigi". Sono Alice ed Ellen Kessler, gi...

Send us Fan Mail Johnny Dorelli, "il Frank Sinatra d'Italia" according to the press on the occasion of Johnny's 80th birthday in February 2017. The newspaper L'Avvenire explained: "ancor oggi il suo è  l’unico nome da farsi in risposta al quesito «Chi è il più grande entertainer dello spettacolo italiano?». Il primo in questa classifica resta lui, Dorelli: sin dall’es...

Send us Fan Mail On 5 July 2021, Raffaella Carrà passed away at the age of 78 after an unspecified illness. The story was front page news, given Raffaella's status in contemporary Italy. RAI explained ‘È morta all’età di 78 anni Raffaella Carrà, definita la Regina della tv italiana. Showgirl, cantante, ballerina, attrice, conduttrice televisiva, radiofonica e autrice televisiva. [...] Durante...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we're talking about dancing and the  varietà , focusing in particular on the  balletto , the dance troupe, but also on the hosts and guest stars who dance as part of their performances on variety shows. And whilst I'm a bit outside my comfort zone talking about dancing, I'm going to describe the different routines that we see during the 1950s, 60s a...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we're focusing on where it all began for the varietà televisivo  and looking in particular at the series from the 1950s that helped establish the genre and its primary characteristics. With the help of the listings magazine  Radiocorriere  we'll look at the different series that debuted at the start of regular television broadcasts in January 1954 - Sett...

Send us Fan Mail 'Con un lampo unico di creatività, è stata proprio lei ad aver letteralmente rivoluzionato la comicità e l'immagine femminile dal secondo dopoguerra con l'invenzione di personaggi simbolo come La Signorina Snob, la sora Cecioni, Cesira la manicure. L'ironia scorrettissima, il tratto rapido, il soprassalto linguistico e surreale sono i suoi strumenti per raccont...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we're exploring the impact of all of the popular variety shows that audiences were watching on television at (approximately) 9pm in the evenings in Italy. With help from the novels of Elena Ferrante, Francesca Melandri, and Marco Vichi alongside extracts from diaries of viewers from the 1950s, we'll get a sense of what it really felt like to watch these...

Send us Fan Mail Antonello Falqui and Vito Molinari are the two directors who are main focus of this episode that goes behind the camera of the varietà . We find out more about Falqui's inspiration and influences, looking at how his work in television drew on his love of theatre, cinema, and the American musical. His significant varietà included Il musichiere , Studio Uno , Teatro 10 , and Mi...

Send us Fan Mail Today's episode focuses on just one varietà but it's an important one: Canzonissima . This series featured on Italian television screens throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s (even if it did undergo occasional changes in title) and helped to launch and establish many famous faces in this period. The premise of the show was a song competition that was linked to the New Year&...

Send us Fan Mail Music is such a fundamental element of the varietà and this episode explores some of the most popular types of songs and most successful singers and programmes in Italy during the 50s, 60s, and 70s. We'll think about the canzone all'italiana alongside urlo and international stars as examples of songs that were on the small screen in Italy, and what the impact of seeing s...