The second episode of the series starring Aidan Turner, which aired last night, Tuesdays March 30, on Italy’s RAI 1 channel, has reached 5.8 million viewers with a 23.9% share. The appointment with the blockbuster dedicated to the Italian genius Leonardo Da Vinci, written by Frank Spotnitz and Steve Thompson , with a cast flaunting the presence of Giancarlo Giannini and Matilda De Angelis, however, has not made to record the numbers of last week’s debut, that is over 6.9 million viewers and 28.2% of share.
Luca Bernabei, managing director of Lux Vide, house manufacturer of the series, has declared that, given this success, “there will be a second season of Leonardo” and “I would want to make a series also on Michelangelo and his relationship with the Pope during the realization of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel”. “We are super happy”, Bernabei has continued commenting the ratings and “it was not granted with a thing speaking about art and culture and that’s the demonstration that beautiful important history can also be told to the wide audience, if you offer beautiful things, the audience watches them”.
About the controversies of the past days due to the narrative choice of the series of inserting some made up events in the life of Leonardo, Bernabei clarifies: “We have not invented that much, we have created the subplot of the homicide that anyway is needed because through this accusation moved to Leonardo, his mind and soul can be explored, it’s a plot device. The fiction tells about the white spaces and fills up the black spaces. The history is all there, in every episode we will tell about one of his masterpieces, and also about some aspects of his life, like being abandoned by his father”.
Meanwhile, the TV series has also been sold in Great Britain, where it will be available on Amazon Prime Video, and very soon it will also be in America. Aidan Turner, who plays Leonardo, has also chimed in live from Toronto: “In this moment I am painting, I have been doing it from years, it’s a thing that I like to do. In this period I am working to a couple of projects in Canada, but I cannot say anything at this moment”.