"Teen" Sense of Place. The Representation of Italian Locations in Teen Television Series

Scripted TV products for teens and young people have always been present in Italian television history, although they rarely reached a strong impact in audience choices and editorial logic of broadcasters. However, due to the import of US teen dramas and comedies since the Nineties and then due to the explosion of streaming platforms with their fragmentation of the consumption and the need to reach niche audiences, this genre has found new vitality among producers and players. During the last years, many titles imposed themselves as examples of an Italian way to teen drama, addressing different classic themes of adolescence universe, such as love, sex, school problems, friendship, drugs, bullying and social media dependency. Following and replicating models of representation of other genres and mainstream TV series, Italian teen dramas are also characterized by the use of places and locations as key features interacting with the plot and bringing out different narration styles and rhetoric of urban and rural territories. The chapter proposes different models of representation of the territory in Italian teen dramas, identified through the role and rhetoric of the locations through the narratives.