- Sebastiano is stuck in the wardrobe connecting the bedroom to one of the underground passages. The door refuses to open and Betta has called a carpenter to repair it. But once the job is done, she suspects that the house is full of spy bugs. After warning Sebastiano, they all rush to uncle's bunker, where they can speak freely and decide what to do. Back in the villa, Benni and Carmen discover a bug. Their fears are confirmed. Sebastiano decides to call a meeting of clan leaders in the Holy Room to find a solution to get rid of the police.
- Working behind and in front of the camera Antonio Albanese has created for Rai his first ever TV series; a comedy marked by his unique style. Consisting of six 25-minute episodes, which Rai 3 will air in three peak viewing slots (2 episodes a week, on Saturdays), the series gives life to a new Albanese character with an immense sense of irony and a taste for paradox in addressing the theme of the mafia from a comical stance. This character is Sebastiano, a mob boss in hiding in a northern Italian villa. A place with a thousand "eyes" spying the outside and ingenious hiding places in the inside: cameras, alarms, fences, secret passages, underground galleries, as well as, of course, a buried bunker. Thanks to this strategic abode and the life of "rats" Sebastiano and his family must lead, the police lost all trace of the man years earlier. And from the villa, with the help of trusted figureheads, he pursues the shady and ludicrous business of his building firm. All this with the cooperation of the entire family: his wife Betta, impassibly involved in all the illegal dealings; his first-born Carmen, a university student often in conflict with her father, but who shares his shirt-sleeve philosophy and eloquent cynicism; Benni, his rather dumb 17-year-old son with ambitions considered rebellious by his father, who also doesn't share his passion for cuisine; and finally aunt Vincenza, an eager gambler, and uncle Vincenzo, the founder of the mafia clan, who has lived in blissful seclusion for 12 years. The story is based on the many stratagems real mafia bosses adopt to escape arrest and guarantee themselves long periods in hiding. Amusing and extravagant in the series as they are in real life, from which The Rats takes its inspiration, the episodes dramatically take these situations to their extreme consequences in its intent to represent the mafia world in a comical key, with an intelligent use of sense reversals and catchphrases. The Rats aims at entertaining and amusing viewers in its portrayal of the mafia underworld, while ridiculing and condemning between the lines its codes, misdeeds big and small, misdealings, ignorance and human misery. Each of the 6 episodes revolves around the mafia way of life, of which the main character is absurdly proud. All this, in the perspective of a plot full of enlightening echoes and contrasts, mixed with everyday family problems and the intimate moments of the individual characters. We can move, for example, from the need to discover what the rival family clan of the Calamarus is plotting to the contrasted sentimental relationship between Carmen and the scion of that family; from decontaminating the house from police bugging devices to Benni's declaration that he intends to become a vegetarian; from the rulebook on how to bribe politicians, to the elderly uncle's candid wish to go to the beach...
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