This book offers the first comprehensive study of recent, popular Italian television. Building on work in American television studies, audience and reception theory, and masculinity studies, Sympathetic Perpetrators and their Audiences on Italian Television examines how and why viewers are positioned to engage emotionally withand root forItalian television antiheroes. Italy's most popular exported series feature alluring and attractive criminal antiheroes, offer fictionalized accounts of historical events or figures, and highlight the routine violence of daily life in the mafia, the police force, and the political sphere. Renga argues that Italian broadcasters have made an international name for themselves by presenting dark and violent subjects in formats that are visually pleasurable and, for many across the globe, highly addictive. Taken as a whole, this book investigates what recent Italian perpetrator television can teach us about television audiences, andour viewing habits and preferences.

Offers the first in-depth study in any language of the representation and reception of criminality in recent and popular Italian television Provides a clear introduction to contemporary, popular Italian television with a criminal focus, as well as Italian programming and viewing platforms Discusses how Italian television products borrow from and elaborate upon popular examples of American serial television, such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and The Wire, which gives it an international appeal

Autorentext
Dana Renga is Associate Professor of Italian at The Ohio State University, USA. She is the author of Unfinished Business: Screening the Italian Mafia in the New Millennium (2013), the editor of Mafia Movies: A Reader (2011), and has published extensively on Italian cinema and television.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Sympathetic Serial Offenders.- 2. Rai: Educate while entertaining entertain while educating in L'ultimo dei Corleonesi , Niente di personale, and Il segreto dell'acqua. - 3. Mediaset's Middlebrow Model: Il capo dei capi, L'ultimo padrino, Il clan dei camorristi , and L'onore e il rispetto .- 4. Sky's Offer You Can't Refuse and Romanzo criminale. La serie's Criminal Payoffs.- 5. Faccia d'angelo : The Allure of Evil.- 6. 1992 and 1993's Difficult Masculinities.- 7. Making Men in Gomorrah 1 and Gomorrah 2 .- 8. #ciaonetflix: Suburra. La serie as International Patrimony.- 9. Conclusions: Gomorrah 3 and Italian Television Abroad.