Sombre TV Show Captivates Italian Public

TV Monologues about the Mafia and civil rights has proved likely to strike in Italy, where semi-naked starlets and talk shows that turn into a mob shouting matches traditional prime-time successes.
The third episode of last week, “Vieni Via Lee Kun” (Come with me) and had 10 million viewers, a record for the RAI state radio (3) and the type of numbers usually reserved for international football matches.
A lot of popularity all the way to Roberto Saviano, a writer (31 years) who lives under police protection since his book, he writes best-selling 2006 “Gomorrah,” a lively expose of the inner workings of the mafia of Naples and the Camorra.
Monologues Saviano strong anti-crime organization open the program, which is set in a studio like naked onstage, and rarely address the issues based on Italian television, such as immigration, euthanasia, and attitudes toward homosexuality.
In a country where Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls the largest private television company Mediaset, and exercise considerable control over RAI, the width, the channel is a small and generally left leaning, was controversial from the outset.
In the opening episode, delivered comedian Roberto Benigni, the tirade for an hour satirical target taste Berlusconi known concerts for women and youth.
After a week, and drew criticism for saying that the Mafia Saviano, traditionally rooted in the impoverished south, and was getting on the ground in the north, and had contacts with the Northern League, the Federalist Party in the ruling coalition Berlusconi.
State anger and demanded that Interior Minister Roberto Maroni to be invited as a guest on the show next to the list of the achievements of the government in the fight against crime.
He urged the Council to producers of the show Ray a call for professional life activists monologues “balance” in two cases of right-to-die and recently split mainly Roman Catholic Italy. When they refused, and announced a hastily pro-life program on Rai 1.
Very difficult
He said Saviano, who was forced to move homes and often meet people in secret locations since receiving death threats from the mafia boss, which makes the exhibition was “very difficult” because of the open hostility of the opinion of many executives of politicians.
There was a great atmosphere around us, and there still is, “said Corriere della Sera in an interview on Monday, before the final episode of the program.
Much tension. I do not think I could repeat this, and not under these circumstances, “he said.
The fare is very different from a regular diet of game offers such as “Mercante in Vieira” with his host gray hair and his assistant, voluptuous, known as “Catwoman black” or “no Striscia Notizia”, which mixes satire, gossip girls in dresses skimpy jump on the table male lecturers.
In a country in crisis bitter and divisive government that could lead to new elections early next year, and show by Saviano and co host Fabio Fazio has been praised and criticized both.
To critics, and explicitly anti-Berlusconi propaganda by left-wing intellectuals.
To admirers, it shows how disappointment with the Minister of 74-year-old prime minister, has been weakened by a series of scandals, is facing a confidence vote on 14 December that could bring down his government.