“Television Can Damage your Health?”. Italian Doctors and Medical Drama: A Qualitative Approach

Abstract

The relationship between medical dramas and medical professionals is an interesting and controversial topic to be investigated, both through the approach of production studies and of qualitative analysis of consumption. Professionals are involved in this serial genre in at least two ways: from a production point of view, through their contribution to the scripts as consultants for screenwriting, and from a reception point of view, through their qualified - but often very critical - opinion about medical dramas as spectators. Both these sides of professionals’ involvement have been investigated through the years, especially as far as American serials are concerned, while less attention has been paid to this topic by Italian television studies. Our paper will focus on Italian professionals’ opinions about the genre of medical drama and, namely, on a popular recent Italian tv series, Doc - nelle tue mani (2020 -). Our hypothesis is that - especially in the professional viewers’ opinion - a persistent strong cultural prejudice towards television prevents them from appreciating national medical dramas and their capacity to depict the Italian medical system in a realistic way. In our research we approach the relationship between medical dramas and medical professionals through qualitative interviews to physicians, in the theoretical framework provided by production studies.

 Keywords

Medical drama; TV series; production studies; qualitative interviews.