One of the advantages of being back in Italy is having the opportunity to turn on the TV with incredible ease. I am not quite sure yet whether this will turno out to be a privilege or a shock, but it will certainly be interesting, and I hope it will be the source of some good posts.

My first encounter with the world of Italian television was last week’s episode of L’Infedele, a talk show conducted by Gad Lerner. The topic of the talk show was the meaning of Christmas and the guests included some politicians from both sides of the political spectrum, as well as a Christian journalist and the Prior of Bose, a monastery in Piedmont.

The show was praised by Aldo Grasso, the TV commentator for Corriere della Sera. Grasso compared L’Infedele to Ballarò and Anno Zero, the two other prime time talk shows aired on Italian TV. He implied that, although Lerner’s show is perhaps a bit too long, it is marginally better than the others, as it allows the spectators to compare the different views expressed by the guests and to form their own opinion on what is going on.

This may seem a tautology to the spectator of foreign TV. A talk show is, almost by definition, a flow of events, which should allow guests and spectators to react to inputs and refine their thinking, perhaps even changing their opinions. However, Italian talk shows are extremely static, with very little movement of ideas happening.

Part of the problem is the incapacity of many Italian journalists to ask truly challenging questions. This has made Italians very skeptical of one-to-one interviews. While Jeremy Paxman or Andrew Marr can put their guest at great unease, making a one-to-one interview a very tricky business indeed, one-to-one interviews in Italy are very often a cheap advertisement for the interviewee. This has led to the tradition of inviting multiple guests from multiple parties, who often scream at each other pre-packaged slogans which are hardly addressed by anyone in the room. There is no flow of ideas, no evolution.

Grasso was probably somewhat harsh on Ballarò, which offers some great contributions from experts and has the capacity to translate difficult concepts into a simpler language. Anno Zero, by Santoro, is a brave program which, despite being quite clearly biased, puts on the table some topics which are left undiscussed elsewhere. However, Grasso is right in saying that Lerner’s show is more conducive to a meaningful discussion.

This peculiarity may be due to the fact that L'Infedele is less popular, and hence politicians are more willing to take risks and to avoid ready-made statements. However, it should be up to the journalist to be more active in the discussion and leave less room to the politicians’ discretion. It may be that British journalists are sometimes too full of themselves, letting their egos invade the room too much. However, they try and be the alter ego of the spectator in the room, asking the questions the spectator would ask.

This is an important characteristic Italian talk shows would greatly benefit from. Without it, more than talk show, these programs risk becoming way less useful talking shops.