TV Italian Style
The ‘TV Italian Style’ podcast is an A-Z of the golden age of Italian television of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s from the perspective of the ever popular varietà and the famous faces who would host and guest star on these shows. It’s a bilingual podcast, in English and Italian, with conversations with experts on Italian TV and culture alongside clips from all the best shows and performances. Visit the accompanying website https://tvitalianstyle.wordpress.com/ to download translated transcriptions for each episode to support your listening.
TV Italian Style
E: E che cosa guardavamo alle 9?
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 shows at the moment they were first broadcast. Italian society was clearly changing during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and television viewing and programmes highlighted this drive towards modernisation. But there was also concern about the less conservative and traditional behaviours that the television might cast light on, and promote. Viewers nevertheless would come together to watch television together, at home and in bars, and felt increasingly part of a national audience of television viewers.
Extracts are taken from the following:
Elena Ferrante, L'amica geniale (2011)
Francesca Melandri, Eva dorme (2010)
Marco Vichi, L'anno dei misteri (2019)
Diaries of Sergio Da Panzano and Irene Cattini included in Damiano Garofalo, Storia sociale della televisione in Italia: 1954-1969 (2018)
Thanks to the AI voices for reading the Italian extracts!