Lux Vide, or the sublimation of pop seriality | Rolling Stone Italy

Luca Bernabei enjoys himself like crazy doing what he does. And that is to give new life, title by title, project by project (we’ll get there), to Italian pop seriality. When he tells you about it, on the day Lux Vide turns thirty, with over 1,500 hours of programming in prime time (to give some numbers), it’s as if there weren’t enough words to contain that contagious enthusiasm, that total dedication: «You can’t do our job well, if it’s not a bit of an obsession», he confesses. A wonderful obsession, I might add. It couldn’t be otherwise, when the company you lead (and which today sees Luca in the role of CEO, with Andrea Scrosati as President and Matilde Bernabei Honorary President) was founded in 1992 by your father, Ettore Bernabei, and that fire is there you have in your DNA: «I don’t think there are many Italian companies that were created by a 72-year-old man like he was at the time», recalls Luca. «Instead of retiring like – rightly so – all people at that age, he felt the need to do something for the world of television, which he had loved after being director general of Rai for many years. My father always said: “The world is full of aqueducts, we need clean and fresh water inside”. The aqueducts are the networks and the water is the contents that we continue to produce 30 years later». Even now, more than ever, behind every story that is thought up there is always, ALWAYS, a question: «“Why do we want to tell it, what is the reason?” It’s never just to entertain. The dream of this man, who wanted to make a television of thought and for the general public, not a niche one, has remained the strategy of Lux Vide». An entrepreneurial idea at the beginning, which then became a very strong marketing positioning: «There are two reasons for our strength at the moment: the broad product, which is very inclusive, and this great desire to train young communicators. In fact, Lux is full of young professionals, screenwriters, directors, script editors. We let them join the creative group at the age of 23-24, we select them with a master’s degree at the Cattolica in Milan, where they come from all over the world. They are people who think about television and do it in a new way. Even better than I can imagine», smiles Bernabei.

With a solid history behind it and a very open outlook on the future of the industry, Lux Vide, which has been part of the international Fremantle group since 2022, was the first Italian production company to import the model from the American studios and works like a real own seriality factory, where spaces dedicated to screenwriters, production, post and commercial coexist in a single structure maximizing the efficiency of each division, an almost unique example for us: «It stems from a proud claim of exclusivity of television, which is different from cinema, advertising and theatre. They are all forms of communication, but TV is a strongly team profession, which needs specially trained communicators, without winking at the cinema or the web. Television is a scientific profession, there is a lot of sophistication behind it». At this point Bernabei takes a little break and then ideally lets us enter a writers’ room: «Occasionally we have series that get stuck, maybe they have a creative problem. So we ask our project’s chief writers to sit together in a room, help locate the catch and unlock it. Here they speak a very sophisticated language, which an ordinary person would not understand». The subject is developed in these writers rooms, the casting carried out in-house, the filming carried out in the owned studios, the post-production followed internally in all its phases. «Everyone thinks a bit that we are “nice guys” who make television and that Don Matteo is a simple product, and instead we work on it as if we were engineers who have to design the span of a bridge, there is enormous sophistication in television, because viewers have become extremely refined and spoiled by American series that cost four times what we have as a budget”. As they say, transforming a “limit” into an opportunity, indeed, into a challenge: «We have to find a way to go and find our audience, with much less money and resources, but certainly with more creativity».

The essential key therefore is that of daring experimentation in the most diverse genres: to be clear, in our parts a medical drama of the caliber of DOC – In your hands there had never been a financial thriller (Italian and international at the same time) like Devils had never seen, not to mention Blanca, which is at an even higher level of innovation because it uses a brand new language: «We have gone a long way because we think we have to create a product that goes around the world and, to do so, we have to be super innovative and go for genres – as you said very well – because we need them to buy them abroad. We try to finance our series with money that arrives from Italy and then have them bought and taken everywhere. Then of course, there are also Italian products, and I’m thinking of God help uswhich we are very fond of because he says very beautiful things, he talks about people’s spirituality, which we will never be able to sell out”. Devils And Blanca instead they are exemplary of the strategy we were talking about: if in the first title, starring Patrick Dempsey and Alessandro Borghi, «I’ll tell you what you don’t know about finance, and in this Guido Maria Brera was brilliant, he paved the way», the second is a crime with a funk soul about an aspiring blind police consultant played by Maria Chiara Giannetta: «A couple of weeks ago we started shooting the second season. We have amazing costumes this year, we’ve gone from Japanese manga, we’ve pushed it even further. The actors now know their characters: the duets between the deputy commissioner Bacigalupo and Blanca make you die of laughter, they are not at all politically correct, and the crime is a little tougher ». “But behind Blanca what is it?”, I ask, and Bernabei replies: «We are all a bit Blanca, as my friend Massimo Gramellini told me: “Every morning we all get out of bed, load ourselves into our invisible wheelchair and go meet our days”. We all have to fight against something, but people like Blanca are superheroes because they have to fight even more. And it’s beautiful when someone encourages you. Here, this is the extreme synthesis of what we do: we tell you that it is possible. I’m not saying this out of cunning and to capture the benevolence of the spectator, but because that’s what my father taught me: to give hope». And hope is not a trivial word, today less than ever. “Let’s give hope with DOCFor example, when we show doctors who do their job well, they are the doctors we would like to have».

Luca Bernabei. Photo: Fabio Lovino

It is important to underline that we are talking about series presented at the LA Screening or which have been sold in at least 100 countries, «in a way in which the entrepreneur takes a very high risk: we produce with Italian money, and if the series doesn’t work it’s a problem, because we do not earn. But fear is always a great engine and pushes us to do very innovative things. The result is that Blanca is seen from Japan to Korea. Every now and then I get clips dubbed in the most incredible ways. For example, in France they practically replaced Grey’s Anatomy with DOC, who could have imagined such a success. These two series owe a lot to their director Jan Michelini who created for both an explosive, modern and international look».

To do all this, Lux has put together a crazy stable of actors, very strong names, undisputed professionalism: from Luca Argentero, Can Yaman and Elena Sofia Ricci, from Raoul Bova to Maria Chiara Giannetta, from Pierpaolo Spollon to Matilde Gioli: «Working long means waking up every morning at 5.30 for eight months and going to the set, if you don’t have people who are willing and able to do it, then the sets explode. And they are immeasurable disasters.” Somehow there is a common thread that unites all these talents: «They are people who have something special inside, they have a sense of devotion to this work, a particular love. And here it is again, that wonderful obsession we were talking about at the beginning; «Spollon, Argentero, Bova are three very different men, but they all share a maniacal professionalism. I’m saying the most trivial thing on earth, but they’ll never arrive on set without knowing the lines, they go to bed early in the evening, they lead the life of monks to keep up with these rhythms, like Maria Chiara, Matilde. And then the technique we use is always this: they start entering Lux, they do something and then slowly they have more and more space. See Giannetta: she started with Don Matteothen he did Good morning mom! (the second season is amazing with two top actors, like her and Bova, and a surprise at the beginning of the series) and Blanca as the absolute protagonist, This would not have been possible if we had acted in a “rogue” way, that is, you take the actor you need at the moment and put him there. They grow with us and we grow with them. We really love each other, because this is too complex a job not to face it like this».

Luca Argentero and Raoul Bova at the event for the 30th anniversary of Lux Vide at the Hotel Eden in Rome. Photo: Virginia Bettoja

In the present and in the future of Lux there are many, many projects. Let’s start from what we will already see on December 7: «I hate Christmas, our first original series for Netflix, is a very feminine, very comedy reflection on the holidays, starring Pilar Fogliati». Right now Lux is on the set of three titles: the new seasons of God help us, One step from heaven And Blanca. But that’s not all: «We should start in September with Coastala soft crime set in that wonderful place in Italy that Americans are crazy about, but we are still working on our Sandokanthere is a new series concept for Mediaset, we are already dealing with DOC 3 and we are preparing an international legal. We’ve always been afraid of this because our judicial system is cumbersome, complex, while now in Italy we have large law firms that include all the disciplines of jurisprudence and have nothing to envy to those in the United States, so it can be done. We have to overcome this Italian shyness a bit, this not feeling up to it at times and be proud of who we are».

And then there is Bernabei’s secret dream: «Years ago I bought the rights to this book from a Milanese school professor, White like milk, red like blood. It took me a long time to convince him and now we are working on a young adult series that is aspirational. I believe that children’s series are – pass me the term – sentimentally pornographic, that is, they use boys to watch them in their easiest aspects: sexuality, violence… I, who have six children between 25 and 9 years old and am interested in boys both for work and as a father, I think there is a very strong romantic, idealistic component in them. It is the essence of youth, which is rarely told because it is much more difficult. We are thinking of something that does more justice to that moment of life. Dreaming now seems impossible because the world screams at you: “Everything will go wrong”. And instead we must continue to do it because what adolescence is, if you don’t dream ».

Luca Bernabei with his wife and children at the event for the 30th anniversary of Lux Vide at the Hotel Eden in Rome. Photo: Virginia Bettoja

According to Bernabei, working for TV involves a huge responsibility: «Communicating is beautiful, fun, but we have to think a lot when we tell our stories. Nothing should be too exposed: Blanca he doesn’t constantly tell you that you can overcome your inability, but it makes you feel good, it makes you smile and that message passes almost without you even realizing it. We communicators must be aware that the public must be enormously respected. I think people feel that and are happy to see our series. And we hope they continue to do so.”