Abstract

SKAM Italia by TIMvision remakes NRK’s transmedia teen drama SKAM, negotiating culture through production formatting and narrative concepts. The series reiterates the Norwegian original’s genre aesthetics, recreating an intense and highly-consumable Gen-Z soap opera in Italy that emphasizes the series’ global character. SKAM Italia does embrace SKAM’s experimental transmedia format but does stray from the original’s public service mission, instead embodying a new, competitive communication media geography. This comparative analysis draws from scholarship on TV formats in the 21st century and aims to provide a close reading of a unique television program contextualized by equally unprecedented cultural and industrial global landscapes.