Popular searches:

The Best TV Shows on Rai 1

Every Rai 1 Show Ranked From Best To Worst

Rai 1 has over 20 shows broadcast from as early as 1951 and as recent as 2024. Highlighting Rai 1’s quality programming, Sanremo Music Festival and Eurovision Song Contest stand out, premiering in 1951 and 1956. Our curated list, current as of November 2024, showcases over 20 of Rai 1’s highest-rated series.

  • Inspector Montalbano
    Inspector Montalbano (1999)8.3

    Inspector Montalbano is an Italian television series produced and broadcast by RAI since 1999, based on the detective novels of Andrea Camilleri. The protagonist is Commissario Salvo Montalbano, and the stories are set in the imaginary town of Vigata, Sicily. In 2012 the series generated a prequel, Il giovane Montalbano.

  • My Brilliant Friend
    My Brilliant Friend (2018)8.1

    When the most important friend in her life seems to have disappeared without a trace, Elena Greco, a now-elderly woman immersed in a house full of books, turns on her computer and starts writing the story of their friendship.

  • Doc – Nelle tue mani
    Doc – Nelle tue mani (2020)8.1

    When Doctor Andrea Fanti loses 12 years of memories from a brain injury, he finds himself adjusting to a world full of strangers.

  • The Octopus
    The Octopus (1984)8.0

    An epic crime saga of power, money, violence and corruption. The mafia controls everything through local and international networks like an octopus, and anyone who tries to bring them down pays the ultimate price.

  • Rocco Schiavone
    Rocco Schiavone (2016)7.9

    Weed smoking, foulmouthed Rocco Schiavone is an offbeat Deputy Commissioner of the State Police. For disciplinary reasons he is transferred to the Alpine town of Aosta, far from his beloved Rome. The sophisticated but cranky Roman despises the mountains, the cold, and the provincial locals as much as he disdains his superiors and their petty rules. But he loves solving crimes.

  • The Ladies' Paradise
    The Ladies' Paradise (2015)7.8

    Follow Teresa Iorio, a young woman who leaves her rural Sicilian hometown for Milan to find work--and much more--at a newly opened department store: The Ladies' Paradise.

  • Medici: Masters of Florence
    Medici: Masters of Florence (2016)7.8

    The story of the Medici family of Florence, their ascent from simple merchants to power brokers sparking an economic and cultural revolution. Along the way, they also accrue a long list of powerful enemies.

  • Sanremo Music Festival
    Sanremo Music Festival (1951)7.7

    The Sanremo Music Festival is the most popular Italian song contest and awards, held annually in the town of Sanremo, Imperia, Italy, and consisting of a competition amongst previously unreleased songs. The Festival was the inspiration for the Eurovision Song Contest.

  • Jesus of Nazareth
    Jesus of Nazareth (1977)7.7

    Dramatizes the Birth, Life, Ministry, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, largely according to the Holy Bible's New Testament Gospels.

  • Un medico in famiglia
    Un medico in famiglia (1998)7.5

    Dr. Lele Martini and his family — his children Maria, Ciccio and Anna, and his father Libero — seek to adjust to a new life in the outskirts of Rome.

  • Leonardo
    Leonardo (2021)7.4

    A fresh look at the life and legacy of the iconic artist Leonardo da Vinci, positing that he was a gay outsider who used his work as a way of hiding his true self. Each episode will examine one of da Vinci’s artworks for hidden clues about a tortured artist struggling for perfection.

  • I bastardi di Pizzofalcone
    I bastardi di Pizzofalcone (2017)7.2

  • Sherlock Hound
    Sherlock Hound (1984)7.1

    Loosely based on the "Sherlock Holmes" series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Hound turns all the classic characters into dogs. The canine Sherlock Holmes, his assistant Watson, and housemaid Mrs. Hudson work together to solve mysteries. The culprit is usually Professor Moriarty and his gang, who use all kinds of wacky contraptions to steal what they want.

  • L'allieva
    L'allieva (2016)7.0

    Alice is a clumsy and passionate coroner resident. She fights between life and love complexities. Even tough she still has a lot to learn, she has a special quality: empathy with the victims that leads her to have crucial intuition in the cases that she works on.

  • Eurovision Song Contest
    Eurovision Song Contest (1956)6.9

    The Eurovision Song Contest is an international song competition, organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and featuring participants representing primarily European countries. Each participating country submits an original song to be performed on live television and radio, transmitted to national broadcasters via the EBU's Eurovision and Euroradio networks, with competing countries then casting votes for the other countries' songs to determine the winner.

  • La Storia
    La Storia (2024)6.9

    Ida, a single mother of two sons, hides her Jewish heritage and fights against poverty and persecution during the end of World War II and post-war Rome.

  • Rischiatutto
    Rischiatutto (1970)6.5

  • Father Matteo
    Father Matteo (2000)6.2

    Don Matteo is a thoroughly ordinary Catholic priest with an extraordinary ability to read people and solve crimes. He’s a parish priest who never met an unjustly accused person he didn’t want to help.

  • Enchantment
    Enchantment (1998)5.2

    Incantesimo is a long-running drama series on Italian television, broadcast on the RAI network. It is set in a hospital called Clinica Life in Turin, Italy, and revolves around the life of the doctors and nurses in the hospital. According to the official website, it is "interested in social themes, the incoherence of daily life, solidarity, love and passion, not forgetting moments of comedy". Incantesimo was first broadcast in March 1997, is now in its 10th series and has broadcast 400 episodes. Incantesimo is also being broadcast on the Chinese CCTV 8 network, dubbed into Mandarin. Many notable Italian actors and actresses have starred in the series including, Orso Maria Guerrini, Delia Boccardo, Kaspar Capparoni, Paolo Malco, Guido Furlani, Alessio Boni, Vanessa Gravina, Paola Pitagora, Alessandra Acciai and Barbara Livi. The series was especially popular in Bulgaria, where it was aired on BNT 1 and Nova Television. In Armenia it was aired on ArmeniaTV and TV5 in Russian, as well as on Shant TV in Armenian.

  • One Step from Heaven
    One Step from Heaven (2011)4.9

    The investigations and adventures of the Forestry Corps of San Candido.