From Veleno to Polvere: TV echoes in Italian true crime podcasts

In recent years, true crime podcasting has become fully established globally through some examples of narrative and investigative journalism that attract listeners and are focal points of a transmedia narrative production made up of books, TV series and related discourses. Podcasts such as Serial have proven to be a bridge for the production of sound storytelling from a radio-centric dimension to one in which the codes, formal control and customs of the radio product are loosened. Two Italian true crime podcasts – Veleno (‘Poison’) (2017 and 2018), by Pablo Trincia and Alessia Rafanelli, and Polvere (‘Dust’) (2020), by Chiara Lalli and Cecilia Sala – are analysed in the broader context of crime news television. The hypothesis that underpins the article concerns the search for connections between the storytelling models adopted in podcasts and the way crime news is told on TV, with a focus on the personalization of the style of crime programme hosts.