In the opening moments of Sky’s new, eight-part biopic Mussolini: Son of the Century, we hear the man himself speak. “For 20 years you adored me and feared me, as a god. Then you madly hated me, you desecrated my corpse,” intones Luca Marinelli, the actor playing the Italian fascist leader, over archive footage tracing the strongman’s rise and reign all the way to his execution by partisans in 1945. “Now, tell me, what was the point? Look around you… we’re still here.”
It’s an interesting moment in history to be broadcasting a seven-hour TV series about the ascent to power of the leader who, in inventing fascism in the 1920s, created a political ideology that would reverberate across that century – and beyond. Italy, where the series was shot, is led by its prime minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing group Brothers of Italy, while across Europe, populist leaders are on the rise. Some of those figures and parties, notably, have been heralded by Elon Musk, the man last seen on the global stage offering what many saw as a fascist salute.
