I just started watching this on RAIplay. First of all, Miriam Leone is a special visual effect all by herself and there is no doubt that casting her, instead of someone less charming but more Fallaci-like, is proof that the producers know what sells.
Oriana Fallaci is an important name with her take on feministic issues and certainly an asset when it comes to retro-woke readings of history.
But when you frame an already-woke narrative with the standardized virtue signalings right from the start, it becomes just too on the nose to make the viewer believe the situation was factually like that.
Quick examples: On the way to New York, she sits next to the seat of male journalist, and the guy assumes her to be the assistant of another male journalist, only to be corrected by Fallaci.
Really?
In 1956, a "woman journalist" is so rare a thing that people get taken aback when they see one? Event the positioning of Lois Lane in Superman (1938) suggests people were pretty much okay with women journalists decades ago. Not to mention His Girl Friday or other examples to how women were celebrated in positions previously associated with men.
One can argue that it is because she is coming from an Italian socio-cultural background and the Italian guy was therefore expecting all journalists on the plane to be male. I could buy that explanation had Fallaci been on a ship from Sicily to mainland Italy, but she's part of a group from Italy to the USA. It just doesn't make sense for a peer to not expect at all there could be a female reporter.
When every show is framed with the same, basic, highly promoted story of "social injustice based on race/gender", you get the same lame outcome, regardless of what subtleties you could have crafted out of a retro story like that. It becomes mere brainwashing, even if the intentions are good and message is correct. And RAI has been investing into this "genre" of woke repentence a bit too much.
I'm not saying that Fallaci wasn't born into and struggled out of conditions relating to gender inequality. What I believe is, by creating such points of stress within the course of the narrative, they are bordering pseudo-historic inaccuracies relating to social acceptance and baheviour.
Otherwise, the show is promising and the casting of a bombshell instead of a passably good-looking actress puts a smirk in your face thanks to how it slightly contradicts the underlying woke theme, but I think silent waters running deeper would be more elegant with regards to storytelling than rapid fires of virtue signaling.
