The Best TV Shows on Rai 1

Alberto Angela leads the dissemination program dedicated to history, art and culture. A historical, archaeological, informative story, with the presence of some protagonists of the Italian cultural or artistic scene.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Edmond Dantes, a sailor falsely accused of treason, is imprisoned in the Château d'If off Marseille. After escaping, and adopting the identity of the Count of Monte Cristo, he plans revenge against those who wrongly accused him.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Paolo Giorgi and Laura Del Fiore, coincidentally approaching their forties, find themselves sharing the ups and downs of life with growing children, extended families, and a hilarious love story.

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.

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.

In a steampunk London, the great detective Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson routinely crack the most challenging cases — perpetrated more often than not by their nemesis, the proud, bumbling genius Professor Moriarty.

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.

Follow brothers Paolo and Ignazio, two small spice merchants who have escaped from a Calabria stuck in the past in search of social redemption. In Sicily they invent a future, turning a small, run-down shop into a flourishing business that young Vincenzo, with his revolutionary ideas, will transform into an economic empire.

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.

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.