Fame Italian Style- Italian Reality Show

I have the luxury of being on the inside of the Italian culture for at least two weeks. I am not a tourist, but a family member or a temporary one. I get to see what the working class, the "regular Joes" watch, eat and worry about.

The Italians can sing. When we look at history we know Italy has a corner on the market, Luciano Pavarotti, Frank Sinatra and it goes on. Italian TV has not given up on the entertainment value of variety shows and singing in a microphone.

They have many shows that are all about singing. For example they have a major competition called San Remo. Now a TV icon known only by the her first name, "Maria" is creating shows for youth. It is very similar to the concept of Fame. She gets a bunch of singers and dancers to audition and they go to school for 9 months and compete on the way. They get eliminated according to popularity and judges. Italians do not hesitate when it comes to criticism. Every reality show in Italy invites random and or famous people to be on the show to comment on the "situation" and they don't hold back. Sports shows, especially soccer, has at least 10 men commenting on everything to how the player fixed his hair to his heroic goal.

The refreshing part is that "Maria" the Italian TV Icon, knows how to arrange her shows to be tasteful. When I first got here I watched the Monday show, Amici, which is the Fame-like show. They had four students left, all singers. They had the camera on them and they were telling their story. Emma cried and I thought oh no here we go again. But she proved me wrong later for her voice is incredible. She has a beautiful Italian body, but a voice of Etta James- with a nice amount of raspy- Spanish Latin to make it perfect. The next Monday was the Final show where all four people had to compete against each other. This show was four hours. It started at 9 and finished at 1 a.m. and at least half of Italy was watching. There was no back stories, no drama, just pure talent proving themselves over and over again. They were judged by their teachers and other media persons. After every song they got a critique. It was very entertaining even if you don't speak the language, which I don't.

Emma won the competition and as I research her other YouTube- songs she deserves it. The other two gentleman were amazing also. One was a classical singer, Matteo who has a Luciano Pavarotti/Botticelli voice. PierDavide- writes his own songs and plays many instruments. Watch some of the videos to judge for yourself.