A Lost Generation. Youth and Its Illnesses in Italian Medical Drama

Authors

Mattia Galli
Ospedale Cervesi di Cattolica image/svg+xml
Nicola Crippa
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore image/svg+xml
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21428/93b7ef64.d06fc7c9

Synopsis

With few significant exceptions, medical drama turns out to be quite an uncommon genre in the Italian scripted production. Nevertheless, there have been significant examples of TV series that have integrated medical storylines within their narratives or, vice versa, of medical series contaminated with tropes from other genres. Among the most distinctive hybridizations is the one with teen drama or, more generally, with stories specifically centered around children or teen characters. In the 2020-2022 timeframe, at least four titles – Mental (RaiPlay, 2020), Fino all’ultimo battito (Rai1, 2021), Everything Calls for Salvation (Netflix, 2022), Lea – Un nuovo giorno (Rai1, 2022-) – attempted to address the relationship with youth from different angles. After a diachronic review of the evolution of medical-related series in Italy (Gisotti and Savini 2010) and their relevance on the overall scripted production of the last three years (Scaglioni 2021, 2022), the chapter will question, through a content analysis (Ye and Ward 2010) the frame representations that the four TV series offer of the new generations. The goal of the analysis is to verify any variation between the tones and depictions adopted by broadcast TV and digital platforms in narrating medical stories.

Author Biographies

Mattia Galli, Ospedale Cervesi di Cattolica

Mattia Galli is PhD student at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan and Media Analyst at Ce.R.T.A. – Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media. In 2020 he gained a Master’s degree with honors in Media Management at Università Cattolica in Milan; his dissertation focused on the evolution of the scripted format within the contemporary TV system. He has collaborated on several research projects on television production, distribution and broadcasting in Italy, as well as being one of the members of the Italian unit of the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project (GMICP). He is currently working on a project, the Atlas of Dystopian Media Narratives, aimed to define how mainstream media (TV series, movies, fiction books, video games) shape images of the future in different production contexts.

Nicola Crippa, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Nicola Crippa is PhD student at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. In 2021 he gained a Master’s degree with honors in Business, media and organizational communication at Università Cattolica in Milan; his dissertation focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in serial television narratives. So far, he has collaborated with Ce.R.T.A. – Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media within the project Atlas of Dystopian Media Narratives and published a contribution with M. Scaglioni about scif i dystopias in contemporary TV series, “Serie senza limiti. La distopia tecnologica nei racconti televisivi seriali”, in Giustizia e letteratura. Oltre i confini della realtà. La fantascienza e gli universi distopici della giustizia, 2023. 

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Volume

Investigating Medical Drama TV Series: Approaches and Perspectives. 14th Media Mutations International Conference

Published

December 23, 2023

Series

Conference Proceedings
Copyright (c) 2025 The Authors

License

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Galli, M., & Crippa, N. (2023). A Lost Generation. Youth and Its Illnesses in Italian Medical Drama. In S. Antonioni & M. Rocchi (Eds.), Investigating Medical Drama TV Series: Approaches and Perspectives. 14th Media Mutations International Conference. Media Mutations Publishing. https://doi.org/10.21428/93b7ef64.d06fc7c9