2000 in Italian television

Events

RAI

• 21–26 February: 50th Sanremo Festival, hosted by Fabio Fazio and won by the band Avion Travel with Sentimento; the final evening gets 18.699.000 viewers. Jovanotti performs, out of competition, the rap Cancella il debito, addressed to the Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, and for this is charged of undue politic propaganda.
• 23 June: end of the "kids TV", the afternoon space traditionally reserved by Rai 1 to the youngest ones. The show for children Solletico is cancelled for low ratings and substituted by a program of gossip.
• 2 July.: The UEFA Euro 2000 Final match between Italy and France teams gets the highest audience of the year, with 21.330.000 viewers and an 81.1% share.
• 28 September: the TG1 broadcasts some crude images about the pedophilic traffic between Italy and Russia. Because the protests of right-wing politicians included the president of the RAI supervisory commission, Mario Landolfi, the director Gad Lerner is forced to resign.
• 1. October: on air, Gad Lerner confirmis his resignation; he admits his error but, in turn, accuses Landolfi to have solicited by a letter the hiring of a journalist. In place of Lerner, Albino Longhi becomes, for the third time, TG1 director.
• 18 December: guest of Porta a Porta, Silvio Berlusconi exposes his program of big public works, tracking on the map of Italy the designed infrastructures. The show arouses the usual controversies for the partiality of the host Bruno Vespa to the Italian right-wing leader.

Mediaset

• 14 September – The Italian version of Big Brother debuts. The show is aired, in anthological form, by Canale 5, and integrally, by the satellite platform Stream and the Internet channel Jumpy. The 19, there is the first scandal: two contenders, hidden behind a sofa, have sexual intercourse with cameras on. In November, another contender, Marina La Rosa, just after leaving the seclusion, poses naked on the Panorama cover.
• 12 October: a TG4 troupe films the Ramallah lynching; the gruesome images go around the world. After a letter of the RAI correspondent Riccardo Cristiano to Al-Hayat al-Jadida, that attributes the footage to an Italian concurrent, Mediaset must withdraw its troupe from Jerusalem to avoid reprisals. Cristiano is, in his turn, disowned and recalled by RAI.
• 21 December – The first season of Grande Fratello is won by Cristina Plevani; the moral winner, however, is the third classified, the culturist Pietro Taricone, who exploits the gained popularity to begin a career as actor. The last episode is seen by 18 million and a half viewers.

Other channels

Awards

• Show of the year: Striscia la notizia and Walker Texas Ranger.
• Man and woman of the year: Luca Laurenti, Simona Ventura and Giorgio Panariello as revelation of the year.
• Best TV movie: Le ali della vita.
• Best serial: Un medico in famiglia,
• Best soap opera: Vivere.
• Best quiz: Passaparola.
• Best variety: Buona domenica.
• Best talk show: C’è posta per te.
• Best event: Aldo, Giovanni e Giacomo show.
• Best music show: Sarabanda
• Best magazine: La macchina del tempo.
• Best sport magazine: Quelli che... il Calcio.
• Best show for children: The Simpsons.
• Special awards: Trenta ore per la vita, Mrs. Emma Baratto, George Clooney, James Coburn and the Pediatric Association for the Children with AIDS.

Debuts

Rai

Serials

Variety

• La prova del cuoco – cooking show, Italian version of Ready Steady Cook, hosted by Antonella Clerici and Elisa Isoardi; 20 seasons.
• Una voce per padre Pio – benefit concert, broadcast every year from Santissima Annunziata square in Pietralcina; again on air.
• Affari di cuore – reality show hosted by Federica Panicucci; 2 seasons. In every episode, the fidelity of an engaged couple is tried by two "tempters".
• Novecento – mix of talk show, quiz and variety about the history of the Twentieth century, hosted by Pippo Baudo; 6 seasons.
• Quiz show, l'occasione di una vita – Italian version of It's Your Chance of a Lifetime, hosted by Amadeus; 2 seasons. The show, very similar to Chi vuol essere milionario? is closed because a Mediaset's complaint for plagiarism.
• Top of the Pops, Italian version of the BBC show; 7 seasons.
• Torno sabato – traveling musical show, hosted by Giorgio Paneriello; 3 seasons.

News and educationals

• Linea Bianca – magazine about life in the mountains, again on air.
• Il raggio verde, talk show, and Sciuscià, magazine, both hosted by Michele Santoro. Because its leftist orientation, Sciuscià is closed after 2 seasons, at the express request of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who, the year before, had attacked Santoro with a clamorous phone-call on air during an episode of Il raggio verde.
• Stracult – magazine about Italian cinema, focused on the popular genres and the B-movies, care of Marco Giusti; it includes also satirical sketches and parodic fictions; again on air.
• Tutti a scuola – ceremony for the official opening of the Italian school year, with the presence of the President of Italy and the Minister of Education.
• Ulisse, il piacere della scoperta – informative magazine about history, art and culture, hosted by Alberto Angela.

Mediaset

Miniseries

• Sei forte, maestro comedy with Emilio Solfrizzi, Gaia De Laurentis and Gastone Moschin; 2 seasons. A middle-aged man with a troubled family situation finds the serenity working as primary school teacher and the love in a colleague.

Serials

• Valeria medico legale – forensic crime drama with Claudia Koll and Giulio Base; 2 seasons.

Variety

• 14 September – Grande Fratello
• C’è posta per te – people show hosted by Maria De Filippi; 21 seasons, Italian record for such kind of program. The hostess organizes a reunion in studio between two persons separated by life; the invitation letters to the show are delivered by actors dressed as postmen, sometimes VIP as the famous goalkeeper Walter Zenga. The format, also if ravaged by critics, has got a constant public success in Italy and has been largely imitated abroad.
• Chi vuol essere milionario? – game show, Italian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, hosted by Gerry Scotti, 15 seasons and a spin-off.
• Ieri e oggi in TV – anthology of various material from the Mediaset archives; again on air.
• Premiata teleditta, cabaret with the comic quartet La premiata ditta, parodying the other Mediaset programs; 4 seasons.
• I ragazzi irresistibili – musical show with the singers, aged but still perky, Rita Pavone, Adriano Pappalardo, Little Tony and Maurizio Vandelli; 2 seasons.

News and educational

• Celebrità – magazine about gossip, with Silvana Giacobini; 2 seasons.
• Sipario del TG4 – magazine focused on gossip, ideated by Emilio Fede; on air till 2015.
• Terra! – magazine of investigating journalism, directed by Toni Capuozzo, on air until 2017; it's considered the most professional among the Mediaset news programs.

MTV Italia

Other channels

• Le battagliere, on the Apulia channel Antenna Sud, and Catene, on the rival Telenorba – sit-coms in Bari dialect, both characterized by black humor and grotesque social satire. They get a noticeable success with the local public and last, respectively, for 4 and 6 seasons.

International

• 6 January – Futurama
• 7 April – Kipper
• 11 June – Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• 4 August – / Dragon Tales
• 17 September – Oggy and the Cockroaches
• 16 October – The Powerpuff Girls
• / Ed, Edd n Eddy
• ''The New Woody Woodpecker Show''

Television shows

RAI

Drama

• La stanza della fotografia – thriller about domestic violence by Antonio Bonifacio, with Cinzia Monreale.
• Vola, Sciuscìù – by Joseph Sargent, with Lino Banfi in his first dramatic role. In Apulia, during the World War II, a mentally disable man becomes a hero saving three allied paratroopers.
• Il rumore dei ricordi – by Paolo Poeti, from the Maria Venturi's novel, with Elena Sofia Ricci and Marco Bonini; 2 parts. A free-spirited mature woman falls in love for a younger man.
• Una storia qualunque – by Alberto Simone, with Nino Manfredi and Agnese Nano; 2 parts. After thirty years of undue prison, an aged man tries to clear his name and to recuperate a link with the sons.

  Religious dramas

• San Paolo – by Roger Young, with Johannes Brandrup in the title role and Ennio Fantastichini as St. Peter; 2 parts. Twelfth chapter of the LUX VIDE's Bible project.
• Un dono semplice by Maurizio Zaccaro, with F. Murray Abraham and Virna Lisi; a rampant businessman changes his values after his wife's death and the encounter with a nun, missionary in India.
• Lourdes – by Lodovico Gasparini, with Angéle Osinski, Alessandro Gassmann and Stefania Rocca; 2 parts. The movie interlaces the stories of Bernadette Soubirous and of a modern journalist enquiring about the Lourdes apparitions.
• Padre Pio: between heaven and heart – by Giulio Base, with Michele Placido in the title role and Barbora Bobulova; 2 parts.

Comedy

• Piovuto dal cielo – by Josè Maria Sanchez, with Lino Banfi, Ben Gazzara, Stefania Sandrelli and Cristiana Capotondi; 2 parts. Two men, a janitor and a dentist, divided by the class differences and by sad family affairs, are forced to collaborate for sake of an abandoned child.

Miniseries

• La bicicletta blu – by Thierry Binisti, from the Régine Deforges' novel, with Laetitia Casta and Silvia De Santis; 3 chapters, coproduced with France. It's almost a remake of Gone with the wind, whose plot is transposed in France during World War II.
• Vite bruciacchiate – by Carlo Arturo Signon, with Elio e le Storie Tese and Renzo Arbore; 4 episodes. The series, that tells the absurd adventures of an Italian rock band looking for success in the USA, was aired after midnight, with very low ratings, and no more replied or distributed in home video; despite its invisibility, in the years it has become a cult-object for the fans of EELST.

Serials

Music

Variety

News and educational

Mediaset

Comedy and drama

• Dov'è mio figlio? – by Lucio Gaudino, with Laura Morante; the broadcast of the movie, about the research of a kidnapped child in Cuba, curiously coincides with the Elián González affair.
• La casa delle beffe – by Pier Francesco Pingitore, with Anna Falchi and Pippo Franco; 2 parts. A Tuscan villa is the theatre, in various historical ages, of eight jests.
• Operazione Odissea by Claudio Fragasso, with Luca Zingaretti, Daniele Liotti and Leo Gullotta; 2 parts. A police commando with codenames all inspired by the Homeric poems has to escort a pentito and to capture a Mafia boss; it carries out the two missions, also if at the cost of the commander's life.

  Religious fictions

• Maria, figlia di suo figlio – by Fabrizio Costa, with Yael Abecassis in the title role; 2 parts.
• Joseph of Nazareth, with Tobias Moretti in the title role, and Maria Maddalena, with Maria Grazia Cucinotta in the title role, both directed by Raffaele Mertes; first chapters of the Lux Vide series Jesus’ friends.
• Padre Pio, miracle man – by Carlo Carlei, with Sergio Castellitto in the title role. Realized in competition with a similar RAI's miniseries on occasion of the friar's beatification, it's the most successful TV fiction of the year, with 12.589.000 viewers.

Miniseries

• Les Miserables – by Josée Dayan, international coproduction from the Victor Hugo's novel, with Gerard Depardieu, Asia Argento, Enrico Lo Verso and Giovanna Mezzogiorno; 4 episodes.

Serials

Variety

• A tu per tu – talk show of the noon, hosted by Antonalla Clerici and Maria Teresa Ruta, then substituted by Gianfranco Funari.
• Macchemù – contest among the most famous title tracks of the Italian TV shows, hosted by Paola Barale; the winner is Giorgio Vanni with Pokémon.
• Operazione five – anthology of the Canale 5 variety shows, celebrating the twenty years of activity by the network.
• Ricomincio da 20 – show celebrating the Canale 5's twenty years of activity, hosted by Mike Bongiorno and Paolo Bonolis.
• Provini, tutti pazzi per la TV – hosted by Gerry Scotti; unfortunate auditions, taken from the Mediaset archives, are shown to the public, often in presence of the candidates themselves.
• Teatro 18 – show, hosted by Serena Dandini and Claudio Bisio, with singers and comedians performing together.
• Telenauta 69 – with Lilo & Greg; the program opposes nostalgically a fake 1969 RAI variety, shot in black and white and inspired to cult shows as Canzonissima, to pieces of the vulgar Italian TV in 2000.
• Wozzup, la casa di Italia 1 – talk show aimed to the teen-agers, hosted by Daniele Bossari.

Other channels

• Disco 2000 – program about history of pop music, hosted first by Daniele Bossari, then by Giorgia Surina.

Ending this year

• Momenti di gloria Paperissima sprintPinocchioProvincia segretaLe ragazze di Piazza di SpagnaSolleticoTargetVota la voce
• ''Zap zap''

Deaths