People

The volume Sport e serialità televisiva. Storie, generi, culture nazionali (Morcelliana Scholé) by Paolo Carelli explores a field that has so far remained largely under-investigated within television studies: sports-themed scripted TV series.While documentaries and docu-series have become one of the most prolific genres on global streaming platforms, fictional and scripted narratives centred on sport have received comparatively little academic attention. Yet, as Carelli convincingly demonstrates, sport has long functioned as a powerful narrative engine within television seriality—capable of shaping collective imaginaries around values such as victory and defeat, effort and resilience, the overcoming of limits, as well as broader themes including social and family conflict, gender identity and racism.

Paolo Carelli, researcher and lecturer in Media Theory and Techniques at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, adopts a historical and comparative perspective, focusing primarily on the United States and Italy. The book reconstructs the key moments in which sport began to permeate serial storytelling, intersecting with the emergence of specific disciplines as socio-cultural phenomena and with the evolution of television systems and business models.

In the US context, the analysis recalls the proliferation of made-for-TV movies and miniseries dedicated to baseball in the 1960s, followed by the growing centrality of American football and basketball in later decades as vehicles for stories of marginalisation, redemption and social struggle. Landmark series such as The White Shadow and Friday Night Lights exemplify how sport became a narrative framework for addressing race, class and community dynamics.
A significant part of the book is devoted to genres and sub-genres, highlighting how sport entered scripted production through increasing hybridisation. In Italy, for instance, the most widely adopted format has been the biopic, particularly within public service broadcasting. Series dedicated to iconic sporting heroes—such as Il grande Fausto (on cyclist Fausto Coppi) or Pietro Mennea – La freccia del Sud—have played a central role in shaping a national mythology of sport.

One of the most striking differences between the two countries lies in the role of comedy. In the United States, sitcoms successfully integrated sport into their narrative frameworks, from Evening Shade to Coach and Sports Night. Italy, by contrast, has historically struggled with comedy as a genre, and this difficulty has also limited the development of sports-themed comedic fiction.
In more recent years, the expansion of streaming platforms has significantly intensified the production of sports-related scripted content, bringing new countries and cultural perspectives into the spotlight. Different disciplines have become narrative anchors reflecting national identities: ice hockey in Canadian series, football in Argentine productions, martial arts in Asian storytelling traditions.

Crucially, many of these series have used on-demand distribution to transcend national boundaries and achieve global visibility. Titles such as The English Game, Senna, A Thousand Blows and Ted Lasso illustrate how sport-based fiction has become a transnational storytelling asset within the contemporary scripted ecosystem.
Ultimately, Sport e serialità televisiva positions sport as a prism through which to read both social transformation and industrial change. By bringing scripted television back to the centre of academic debate, Carelli’s book offers a timely and much-needed contribution to understanding how sport continues to shape narratives, identities and production strategies in the global audiovisual industry.