Inspector Maigret and the Teleromanzo. A Case Study of Early Italian Television

This study investigates the relationships between the Italian Maigret TV series and the “teleromanzo”, a most peculiar narrative genre of early Italian television unanimously considered as the very symbol of the cultural, humanist and educational project of early Rai. Although the definition of teleromanzo as «installment narrative television work of literary origin» seems to exclude this Maigret series, broadcasted in black and white between the end of 1964 and 1972, this investigation demonstrates that it has much more in common with the teleromanzo and its cultural aura than with the rules of television seriality properly speaking, which were still unknown in Italy at that time. This Maigret seris, in fact, testifies to an experimental phase of seriality, or a pre-serial seriality, whose most fertile aspect lies precisely in its capacity to integrate the formula of the teleromanzo and to enrich it with potentially serial elements, while retaining the auratic and humanist dimension imposed by the cultural educational project designed by early Rai of the monopoly.