The young Berlusconi, the review of the docuseries: the hagiographic portrait we didn't deserve

The young Berlusconithe docuseries Netflix which tells the life of the former Prime Minister, begins with an excerpt from Telemikein which Mike Bongiorno do Silvio Berlusconi the question that all Italy he wanted to ask him: “Has it ever occurred to you to go into politics?”. More than 30 years later, they know full well what it would have been the right answer, or at least the most sincere: a resounding “yes” would have been enough, and if things had gone like this we would have deprived ourselves of one of the most iconic statements of the Knight: «I consider myself a man of doing, so let me do the job I know how to do well, which is that of an entrepreneur.” Well, his vocation was not followed completely, or rather, it was accompanied by thatboring hobby of the President, where between one legislature and another he always found time to be “a man of action”. Yet, despite his doing and being a man of doing, the first law from which he managed to benefit is not his: it is the Mammì Lawthe one that carries the nickname of Reads Polaroids.

But what does that have to do with it photography with the Knight? A question that leaves room for more than one answer sarcastic. She was called Reads Polaroids because he did nothing but “photograph” the ranomalous reality of the television system of the time, leaving it unchanged and legitimizing it. Before that law the Rai held theabsolute television monopoly and private TV stations were only allowed to broadcast in some limited areas and not on the national territory. The power of the television medium was understood to overcome the problem Berlusconi invented the «pizzone», title of the first episode of The Young Berlusconithat is, a long magnetic video recording that was distributed and then broadcast simultaneously on all local TV stations owned by himmaking the many small local television stations become one large group that broadcast the same thing nationwide. The smart onewhich in the series is considered a stroke of genius, led parliament to question the legitimacy of the operation and the subsequent enactment of the Mammì Law, which he did nothing but abandon everything as it was and say: “That's fine.”

This law and other stages of the Italian television historyare told in The young Berlusconi, a series that it could have been a good opportunity to relive the birth of Berlusconi's empire, told by those who experienced it firsthand. This is not the case. The series is a jumble of self-serving stories and interviews with the total absence of a contradictory: a portrait that was not missed at all. Yet there was a lot of material to do well. The entire docuseries is enriched with unpublished archive images and interviews that could have given more than what was shown, such as the one with Marcello dell'Utri, one of the architects of the birth of Fininvest etamong the people who were closest to the former prime minister.

The series had a long gestation process: built between 2022 and 2023 and was finished a few weeks before the Knight's disappearance and saw the light ten months later. But is this perhaps the problem? If we still cannot tell this story well it is because the topic is still too hot to be treated impartially, but in a situation like this, in which politics is almost never mentionedit would have been enough to limit ourselves to the mere recounting of the facts, without indulge in flattery and exhilarating storieseven when getting excited was absolutely not necessary.

The fantastic aesthetic features of this series are striking, as is the direction Simone Manettiessential and with the right dose of pathos, what does not convince the tone of the narrators, all drawn from a circle of friends, like Galliani, Confalonieri and the aforementioned Dell'Utri. If it is true that nothing ever comes to harm, then let's make the best of it de The Young Berlusconiand we welcome with open arms the men of doing, hoping that among what they do there is also a decent documentary on Silvio Berlusconi.