Italian scripted television: generalist appeal and international market access

[Autom. eng. transl.] The article develops an overall picture of today's Italian television fiction, outlining its recent evolution both in terms of the generalist offer and that of the pay offer. Instead of a setting that absolutizes the aesthetic data and the formal refinement of the productions - an approach that would emphasize the niche seriality of the paid networks - the authors prefer to articulate the concept of quality by adapting it to the different sides of the offer, ie taking first considering that the market needs of the Rai and Mediaset channels cannot be superimposed on those of Sky and Netflix. These are proposals that speak to different audiences and which, for this reason, must adopt different narrative and thematic models. Keeping in mind the specificities of the two sides, the piece can thus highlight their respective strengths - the transversal grip capacity of the characters of the Rai fiction refined in the miniseries genre in two episodes and then grown over the years in formats more suitable for export; the anti-heroes for selected targets of the Sky series - and weaknesses - the difficult contingency of the Mediaset fiction which paid an unfavorable network identity to the scripted product, as well as excessive attention to the gender dimension at the expense of that of the theme. The article concludes by briefly describing the terms of the challenge to the internationalization of Italian fiction in light of the renewed visibility that it has just gained on the foreign limelight with important co-productions.