Concept
Several teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 have to study for a month in a boarding school where the curriculum is based on education between the 1960s and the 1980s. The students must follow a strict dress code and give up their phones and electronics during the month, and inappropriate haircuts, any kind of piercings and foul language are all forbidden. Students may be put in isolation or expelled if they do not follow these rules.
Student dormitories are separated by gender. Classes are given in Italian, Latin, history, geography, mathematics, biology, a foreign language (French in the second season, English in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth), civics and art. Elective classes are physical education, choral music and singing, music education, dance, aerobics, and computer science. At the end of the month the students are required to take an exam (written and oral). If they pass they are presented with a diploma suited to the period that season is set in.
The first season was set in 1960, year of the Olympic Games in Rome and broadcast from 2 to 23 January 2017.
The series was renewed for a second season set in 1961 (the 100th anniversary of the Unification of Italy), and was broadcast from 26 September to 17 October 2017. This season introduced the figure of the class representative (one for boys and one for girls), and the addition of French as a foreign language.
The third season, set in 1968, was broadcast from 12 February 2019 to 12 March for a total of five episodes. [2] In this season English replaced French as a foreign language, Civics replaced Latin, Art and Music education was added. In the summer following the third season, Clementoni released a board dedicated to the program.
The fourth season is set in 1982, the year in which Italy won the FIFA World Cup, and aired from 22 October 2019 to 26 November 2019 for six episodes, featuring computer science, aerobics and breakdancing as non-exam activities.
The fifth season, which was set in 1992, aired from 27 October 2020 to 15 December 2020. In this edition, the school where the show has been registered is the Convitto Nazionale Regina Margherita in Anagni in the Province of Frosinone, due to heavy COVID-19 pandemic spread in Lombardy. 1992 has been one of the darkest years of Italian history, due to the killings of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino by the Sicilian Mafia; and the political corruption scandal known as Tangentopoli (Bribesville) for which there was the consequent national judicial investigation known as Mani pulite (Clean Hands), which discovered various instances of corruption and briberies within the Italian politics. This scandal caused the dissolving of the Christian Democracy party, that, together with the previous dissolution of the Italian Communist Party in 1991 caused by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the same year and consequent disillusionment with Communism in some Italian communist politicians, especially the then Secretary of the Party Achille Occhetto, caused by this and the previous fall during the previous years of the others communist governments in Eastern Europe, in turn was one of the major causes which brought to the creation of the Second Italian Republic in two years.
The sixth season is set in 1977, the year in which RAI started to broadcast programs in color for the first time. It aired from 26 October 2021 to 14 December 2021.
The seventh season is set in 1958, a year in which students in Italy were still separated in lower secondary education according to the fact if they wanted to, after completing the middle school to continue to study in high school or not. This was the first seasons in which there weren't entrance exams and in which class representatives weren't elected. It aired from 18 October 2022 to 29 November 2022.
