I topi

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.