The BEST Rai 1 shows of all time
Every Rai 1 show, ranked
We've compiled the average episode rating for every Rai 1 show to compile this list of best shows!
#1 - The Best of Youth
Nicola and Matteo Carati are two brothers of Rome, who live the years from 1966 to 2000 and all the events which have signed this period. They begin their adventure, helping Giorgia, a young girl confined in an asylum. Then, after the flood of Florence, Nicola meets Giulia a talented piano player with a dangerous sympathy for the BR. Matteo, a rebel spirit entered in the police, will find the optimistic photographer Mirella. These four characters and many others will cross the years of terrorism and Tangentopoli.
View Episode Rankings#2 - The Best of Youth
The Best of Youth is a family saga set in Italy from 1966 through 2003. It chronicles the life of an Italian family, the Caratis, but focuses primarily on two brothers, Matteo (Alessio Boni) and Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio), documenting their journey from the prime of their wild youth in the mid-1960s counterculture, to parenthood and retirement in the early 2000s. The film aims to show the interaction of the personal and the political, the ways in which small events may become turning points in the important choices made by individuals.
View Episode Rankings#3 - Inspector Montalbano
A look at the life of the police commissioner, Salvo Montalbano, of the Sicilian town of Vigata and the criminal cases solved by him.
View Episode Rankings#4 - Mafia Only Kills in Summer
Based on the multi award-winning and critically acclaimed movie of the same name, Mafia Only Kills in Summer mixes tragedy and comedy to tell the story of an Italian family, beginning in late 1970s Palermo, against a setting of growing mafia violence.
View Episode Rankings#5 - Non dirlo al mio capo
Italian comedy/fiction,revolving around funny lies and omissions. Lisa is a recent widow running in some financial troubles that forces her to leave her law studies an look for a job. By coincidence (and lying about her condition of mother of 2), she gets hired in a prestigious law firm in Naples, of which she becomes the main lawyer's and owner's assistant. The owner, Enrico, is a cynical lawyer, a rich play-boy that despise women and tenderness, probably due to some past tragedies and misadventures, result also of the strong education received by his father, who was the previous owner of the firm. The fiction goes on around the adventures and misunderstandings of Lisa trying to hide from her boss the situation... and avoiding to fall in love with him (and he to fall in love with her on turn !). Other characters contour the two main ones, mostly Perla, Lisa's neighborhood that sometimes babysits Lisa's children, a character of herself, with a witty sense of humor and a troubled love past.
View Episode Rankings#6 - Sister Angela's Girls
Sister Angela is an extraordinary and unusual nun. She’s rude, bizarre and imperfect. She has left a turbulent past behind her, even serving a prison sentence where she found faith and received her call. She’s a woman full of shortcomings, but an irreplaceable mother for the girls who hosts in the convent which becomes the home to an extended very active and crazy family that Sister Angela happily and lovingly watches over. The doors of the convent always opens to whoever needs help. Young women who just need a place to live while studying in a city that is not their home, girls with health problems, without a family, young escorts, orphans… Sister Angela doesn’t perform miracles, but she is always there to lend an ear and listen.
View Episode Rankings#7 - La Linea
La Linea follows the (mis)adventures of a man, known simply as Mr. Linea. He walks and lives on a continuous line, of which he himself is a part. Often the line stops, or something in or on it is in the man's way, he then turns directly to the cartoonist and complains until the situation is changed.
View Episode Rankings#8 - Un medico in famiglia
The Martini family, composed of a widower doctor, his three children, his father, his sister-in-law, the housekeeper, a friend of hers, and his hospital employees, live, learn and love together.
View Episode Rankings#9 - Doc
When Doctor Andrea Fanti loses 12 years of memories from a brain injury, he finds himself adjusting to a world full of strangers.
View Episode Rankings#10 - Sandokan
Malaysia, the second half of 1800. The English Queen Victoria owns the domain of the eastern lands of Borneo, commanded by Lord James Guillonk, fierce and ruthless conqueror, father of the beautiful Marianna Guillon, nicknamed "the Pearl of Labuan". The brave Sandokan a young Indian prince, who as a child lost his kingdom because of the English Invasion. He is now the captain of a den of pirates who make constantly attacks against the British army.
View Episode Rankings#11 - The Good Apprentice
Alice is a clumsy and passionate coroner resident. She fights between life and love complexities. Even tough she still has a lot to learn, she has a special quality: empathy with the victims that leads her to have crucial intuition in the cases that she works on.
View Episode Rankings#12 - Blanca (2021)
After losing her sight at twelve years old, Blanca finds herself one step away from realizing her life's dream: working in the police force. But once she arrives at the police station for an internship, she comes up against everyone's distrust. Thanks to the skills that she has developed over the years, however, and the help of her dog Linneo, Blanca turns out to be a detective with a different and effective "look". Taken from Patrizia Rinaldi's novels, it is the first television series in the world shot in holophony, a special sound recording technique that allows the viewer to be in the protagonist's place: to feel how she feels and reconstruct the world.
View Episode Rankings#13 - Per Elisa - Il caso Claps
The series reconstructs a famous news story: the murders of Elisa Claps and Heather Barnett at the hands of Danilo Restivo.
View Episode Rankings#14 - Medici
The story of the Medici family of Florence, their ascent from simple merchants to power brokers sparking an economic and cultural revolution. Along the way, they also accrue a long list of powerful enemies.
View Episode Rankings#15 - Don Matteo
Don Matteo's mission is to unmask the guilty and make it clear that, between evil and good, the latter is the only way to live well with oneself and with others. This detective, in the service of God, possesses an extraordinary intuition which, combined with his deep knowledge of the human soul, successfully guides him into the very depths of crime. Generous, simple, cunning, intuitive, intelligent, meticulous, tenacious, informal, without prejudice: his main task is to awaken consciences in good people.
View Episode Rankings#16 - A Professor
Dante Balestra is a philosophy professor who, after many years of absence, returns to Rome to take care of his son Simone. Fascinating and unconventional, the professor takes a class at the Leonardo Da Vinci high school where he applies his nonconformist teaching method and establishes a very special relationship with his students, including Simone himself. But his way of doing things soon leads to confusing private and professional life. The return from the past of Anita, a former flame of his (now mother of Manuel, the "black sheep" of the class) makes things even more complex.
View Episode Rankings#17 - Maltese
Dario Maltese is a police commissioner of narcotics in Rome, during the late '70s he decided to return to his hometown, Trapani, for the marriage of a colleague and friend, who is killed in front of him. Dario then moves to Sicily and takes his place. He will discover that he had discovered the links between the mafia, politics and finance and he will complete the investigation.
View Episode Rankings#18 - The Bastards of Pizzofalcone
Naples. The Pizzofalcone police station is in disarray: four officers implicated in drug trafficking have been dismissed. They will be replaced by discarded policemen from nearby offices.
View Episode Rankings#19 - Inspector Ricciardi
Naples, 1931. Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi is a Mobile Commissioner obsessed with capturing murderers. The man, endowed with an extraordinary intuition, carries within himself a terrible secret: he sees the ghost of people who have died in a violent way and listens to their last thought. Based on the novels of the homonymous series written by Maurizio de Giovanni.
View Episode Rankings#20 - Exterior Night
The 1978 kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades as seen by an outsider perspective, that of his family and political allies.
View Episode Rankings#21 - Carlo & Malik
The series tells the story of Carlo Guerrieri, a Roman inspector committed daily to solving cases. In addition to work, the man finds himself raising his daughter Alba, a coroner and police consultant, completely alone. Carlo Guerrieri is a Roman inspector who has really seen it all in his life. Everything changes when Malik Soprani arrives, a young colleague from the Ivory Coast. The boy grew up in Italy and studied at the academy, but his arrival in command will see Inspector Guerrieri in difficulty in dealing with Malik both as a colleague and as a "Roman citizen".
View Episode Rankings#22 - Leonardo (2021)
The series recounts Leonardo da Vinci's extraordinary life through the works that made him famous, through the stories hidden within those works, revealing little by little the inner torment of a man obsessed with attaining perfection.
View Episode Rankings#23 - The Name of the Rose
In 1327, when Christendom was divided between the authority of Pope John XXII and that of Emperor Louis IV of the Holy Roman Empire, the ex-inquisitor Guillaume de Baskerville went to a Benedictine abbey, located between Provence and Liguria, accompanied by his young secretary Adso who is the narrator of the plot. In a climate of theological conflict between the Franciscans and the pontifical authority over the poverty of Christ - serving primarily as a front for the political conflict between the pope and the emperor - the former inquisitor must investigate, at the request of the Abbe, on the suspicious death of one of the monks. Quickly, what many seemed to consider as suicide is becoming more and more disturbing.
View Episode Rankings#24 - Red Band Society (IT)
Teens live in a hospital dealing with illnesses and along the way learn more about themselves and eachother than they ever knew. They learn about love, life and choices.
View Episode Rankings#25 - One Step From Heaven
Un passo dal cielo (One step from heaven) is an Italian television series starring Terence Hill as commander of the State Forestry Corps in the Italian village of Innichen and Enrico Ianniello as the local State Police commissioner.
View Episode Rankings#26 - The Young Montalbano
This prequel to the Inspector Montalbano film series opens in the early 90s when Salvatore Montalbano, a talented young policeman, is promoted to the post of commissioner and transferred to Vigata. There he finds himself supervising a group of agents that include Carmine Fazio, many years his senior, and quirky Sicilian, Catarella.
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