Be aware that you are faced with a modest product and be equally attracted to it. This is the effect caused by “A testa alta”, a drama which has allowed Canale 5 to return to totaling numbers that had been missing for centuries. The last of the three episodes attracted 4 million viewers, equal to a 28.2% share. An epochal fact.

The location definitely helped. Wednesday has always been the easiest evening due to less fierce competition and a Rai 1 that generally raises the white flag. Yet, this was not automatically synonymous with success for the fiction that Mediaset had tried to launch and which failed miserably.

“Head held high” no. And we can’t help but trace it all back to the Ferilli factor, a recognizable face recognized by the public of the Mediaset flagship, thanks also to his stable (and decisive) presence at “Tu si que vales”.

The countless parodies on social media (but even Ferilli laughs about them)

The series in question quickly became a meme, generating endless parodies on social media. A shot at the pigeon which, however, magically transformed into a strong point. “Head held high” has in fact become central, the fulcrum of discussions and debates, the perfect result of the saying “as long as it is talked about”.

In “A testa alta” everything appears pompous and didactic. Some details are exaggerated, other steps are obsessively explained and there is a tendency to simplify complex concepts. In short, a perfect restitution of what “Boris” put together with a perculative tone more than fifteen years ago. What was mocked then reappears today, with Ninni Bruschetta (who played the director of photography Duccio) a curious link between the two titles.

“Head held high” gets you. If you started watching it, you were unlikely to be able to move away from it. What aroused curiosity, starting from the promos released in December, was the story of the principal Virginia Terzi, who ended up at the center of a scandal due to the diffusion of an intimate video of her with a mysterious man recorded at the lake. In reality, the topic of revenge porn dissolved immediately, or rather, it became marginal. Cyberbullying has been relegated to the background, as has the issue of shame and the difficulty in holding people’s eyes. It was just a pretext to launch a much more complex story, made up of secrets, crimes, lifelong friends who aren’t and twists.

From the first second “A testa alta” enjoyed its own identity, a fulcrum, something that made it recognisable: Ferilli, as we were saying, who played a lot on an ultra-Roman diction.

And so her sister Cecilia, called “Scescilia” thousands of times for all three episodes, became a brand, a brand, a label. Not of quality, but certainly of iconicity.

Sabrina – who at the same time appears on Prime in “Gigolo per Accident” with a completely different acting streak – didn’t mind. Indeed, she cashed in and relaunched ironically, playing on the catchphrase herself. In this way “A testa alta” has become something else, something no longer judgeable in terms of workmanship, but rather a fiction capable of establishing itself in the ‘trash’ department. However, a refined, elegant ‘trash’, which has rested on a basis of credibility from the beginning.

Canale 5 enjoys the exploit and, at the same time, eats its hands, perhaps regretting not having imagined a more extensive series. A regret that cannot be canceled even with the planning of a second season, given that the plot was conceived as ‘circular’, with a start and a conclusion. If anything, the seed planted remains, that is, having finally intercepted the spectators’ request. As well as an enthusiasm not to be wasted.