The blood-soaked programme schedule. From Vermicino to Garlasco: the story of the ‘TV court’

The unbearable prevalence of Evil. Life in the monasteries was governed by canonical hours, so that no moment would be lost to contemplation. The Italian television day has adopted the same structure, replacing the mystery of faith with that of crime news. In the morning, the programmes on Rai 1 and Canale 5; at lunchtime, the talk show on Rai 2; in the late afternoon, La7; and on Fridays, in prime time, the sung mass of ‘Quarto Grado’. The celebrant changes, but not the rite, nor the usual name of a village in the Lomellina region. On 28 September, the Pavia Public Prosecutor’s Office reopened the investigation into Sempio and is preparing to seek his trial for a murder that took place nineteen years ago, for which another man, Stasi, was convicted and has served most of his sentence. Two guilty parties, one victim: a godsend for the national entertainment industry because Garlasco is now a TV format. The palm print and the DNA found under the victim’s fingernails are being subjected to analyses once reserved for the tax authorities. Film crews are stationed outside the police station, online forums host parallel trials in which every user feels like a prosecutor, and YouTube channels dedicated solely to this case are thriving. Every detail is laden with meaning and shared far and wide, because the town knows the Poggi family’s house better than its own. In 2025, Garlasco dominated the television schedules, and in 2026 it had not let up one iota. The protagonists are recurring characters, each with their own quirks, as in a soap opera where viewers remember the characters more than the plot. A trial that never ends, because a single doubt is enough to fill an entire season.

It is not merely a question of quantity. It is the nature of the flow: unconditional, apathetic yet with sudden jolts, dispensed in regular doses, a fragment every day. The viewer has not read the court records, knows nothing of forensic genetics, and cannot question things methodically, because tomorrow’s news will have replaced today’s. There is one thing, however, they can do with enthusiasm: take sides. The relationship is one between technical knowledge that cannot be verified and a public that may or may not believe it, depending on their sympathies. It is called the ‘illusory truth effect’: a statement repeated over a long period comes to seem true, regardless of the evidence – a steady drip that imposes habits rather than ideas. Staying with the Garlasco case, for years the public was convinced that the culprit was Stasi, the boy ‘with eyes of ice’; today, with equally unshakeable certainty, they point to Sempio. No one has read a single line of the court judgements. But the narrative has changed, and their conviction has followed suit obediently.

This phenomenon did not emerge overnight. A key prototype can be traced to Vermicino in June 1981, when RAI broadcast eighteen consecutive hours of live coverage focused on the artesian well where Alfredino was slipping ever deeper, despite the presence of President Pertini and millions of Italians watching on television. The medium realised that grief generates higher audience engagement than any variety show. Then came the scale model of the Cogne cottage on Porta a Porta, and in 2010 the coachloads of tourists to Avetrana. The next step was on an industrial scale. For the past three years, Elisa True Crime has been the most listened-to podcast on Spotify Italy, closely followed by Stefano Nazzi’s Indagini; two out of three Italians say they are fans of the genre, with women making up the majority, and the success is spreading to books, theatre tours, docuseries and the drama series that turn news stories into legend. Studio-based true crime is cheap to produce; four commentators, a correspondent, a map of the country, no rights fees to pay. Reality writes the scripts perfectly well.

On La7, crime has now been given its own slot. ‘Ignoto X’, every weekday evening before Mentana’s programme, is presented by Pino Rinaldi, a veteran of ‘Chi l’ha visto?’, who states that he does not wish to solve the cases or give in to voyeurism. Praiseworthy intentions, subdued lighting, carefully chosen words, poignant pauses. One evening, whilst reporting on a mother killed by stone blows in the Benevento area, Rinaldi pauses: it’s difficult to carry on, he says. On social media, people thank him for his humanity. It’s a variation on the genre – a mournful moralism that absolves the viewer and allows them to feel superior. Condolences become a form of discourse, but also a form of entertainment.

Why do we like it? In 1827, Thomas De Quincey sarcastically proposed judging murder as one of the arts, assessing its composition and style. But it was Roland Barthes, in the 1960s, who hit the nail on the head: a news story is a self-contained piece of information that refers to nothing outside itself, and one does not need to know the world to understand it. There is also a distinctly Italian aspect to this: the provincial crime story restores what politics and the economy have taken away, namely the illusion that the truth is within reach. The world is unreadable; a crime is readable.

The most loyal audience — pensioners watching television in the afternoon — lives a world away from the violence they consume in industrial quantities. But it is precisely this distance that makes it consumable. Media crime functions as an antidote to fear, like a vaccination: small doses of horror are inoculated so that the body learns to recognise danger without actually facing it. Crime is accompanied by motives and culprits; it shifts fear onto specific targets, and acts upon what psychologists call ‘belief in a just world’: it happened to the victim, not to us – the wrong friend, the door left open, the boyfriend she shouldn’t have trusted. For many elderly people, the programme is a familiar companion, something to fall asleep to, lulled by voices recounting distant stranglings. They take it every day like a medicine.

Then, however, at a certain point, boredom sets in. A deep, waiting-room kind of boredom sets in. The same faces appear on different programmes, the usual layout persists, the same formula is applied, and a sensational twist is tacked onto a piece of advice that changes nothing. Crime loses even its power to shock. All that remains is a sombre murmur, and the trick is obvious. Consequently, the viewing figures take a dip. Fresh blood is urgently needed.

While the networks jostle for the latest consultant on track 33, stagnant wages, wars in Europe and a country that is depopulating and ageing are pushed to the sidelines. An erosion. During the Mani Pulite years, the public followed the trials of the powerful; today, they spy on the chat messages of village youngsters. The centre of gravity has shifted from the halls of power to provincial detached houses. Social conflict takes the form of an individual: the violent husband, the envious neighbour – never a systemic injustice. Such is the consolation of private crime: Evil has a first name and a surname and can be isolated and locked away.

Then there is a cost to the justice system itself: suspects and witnesses being judged on prime-time television before they even appear in court, the presumption of innocence reduced to a mere formality, and magistrates reading expert reports in the newspapers that they have not yet received. Alberto Stasi, on day release, leaves prison every morning to go to work and returns every evening. Meanwhile, at lunchtime, he is still being put on trial on the telly.