The miniseries L’Odissea and La famiglia Benvenuti begin a new trend in the RAI fiction: they are shot in color (also if broadcast in black and white) by movie directors and with a cinematographic style. However, the RAI doesn’t stop producing the traditional “scripted novels” in theatrical style.
January 15.: the broadcast schedule of the National Channel is extended to the lunch time, now covering the time slots from 12.30am to 2pm and from 17pm to 23.30pm.
October 1: the Swiss television begins the color broadcasting, in time for the Mexico Olympic Games[1]. Soon, many Italian viewers prefer the Italian Swiss channel (TSI), in colors and not politically conditioned, to the RAI.
Debuts
Variety
La corrida – Dilettanti allo sbaraglio (The corrida – Amateurs at risk). Talent-show, hosted by Corrado Maltoni; born for the radio in 1968 and successfully transposed in TV in the Eighties. Unlike the following talent-show, here the competitors are true amateurs, often good-willing but comically inept, and politely mocked by the host.
Oggi le comiche (Today slapstick) – Anthology, hosted by Renzo Palmer, of comic shorts from the golden age of silent film.
Senza rete (Without a net) – Musical show of the summer; lasted for 8 season, with various hosts. So called because the singers perform “without the net” of the play-back, it gets, in some years, up 18 million viewers.
Serials
La famiglia Benvenuti (The Benvenuti family) – by Alfredo Giannetti, with Enrico Maria Salerno,Valeria Valeri and Claudio Gora. This family comedy about the life of a middle class family (an architect, his wife and his two sons) is, by now, a precious time capsule about the Italian way of life in the late Sixties. It gets a great success by public and critic and, in 1969, a second season in colors is shot. Later, it’s no more replied, because the child star Giusva Fioravanti (who played the role of the younger son) is become a NAR terrorist.
L’Odissea (Odissey) – by Franco Rossi, with Bekim Fehmiu as Odysseus and Irene Papas as Penelope. It was the first great coproduction among European televisions (Italy, France, Deutschland and Yugoslavia), of a spectacular value never got before on the little screen. Shot in color, it was seen in black and white by the Italian viewers; notwithstanding, it was the hit of the year for public and critic The 80 years old poet Giuseppe Ungaretti introduced every episode reading his Homer’s’ translation.
La donna di quadri (The queen of diamonds) – mystery by Leonardo Cortese, with Ubaldo Lay as the police lieutenant Sheridan. It’s the second chapter of the “cycle of the queens” (of the playing cards). As in the others Sheridan’s inquiries, the story is set in a fictive America, fully reconstructed in studio (but the final chapter is set in Capri).
I racconti del maresciallo (The marshal’s tales) – by Mario Landi, from the stories of Mario Soldati (who appears onscreen, introducing every episode). Turi Ferro plays magisterially a Carabinier's Marshasl, zealous at work but very human; his stories are, more than detective tales, sketches about the Italian province life.
Quelli della domenica (The Sunday people) – comic variety, broadcast the Sunday afternoon. It revealed to a large public the duo Cochi e Renato and moreover the disturbing and grotesque humor by Paolo Villaggio. The Genoese comic created, for the show, two of his most famous characters: the professor Otto von Kranz, a German illusionist, arrogant and muddler, and Giandomenico Fracchia, a pusillanimous clerk oppressed by his superiors.
