Originally broadcast at Sunday lunchtime, Variety Italian Style was an hour-long magazine-style show, which endeavoured to provide “ethnic” television for the many ‘new Australians’ who had made Australia their home.

Variety Italian Style was produced by Panorama Productions, a company that Italian-Australian, Antonio (Tony) Luciano, and his wife, Anne, managed together.

The show featured travelogues about Italian cities and film clips from European television, showcasing tremendous variety acts, often including well-endowed female Italian pop singers, mostly extremely liberated and sans brassieres.

A demographic survey conducted by the Australian National University in the early 1970s found that of 70,000 adult Italians living in the Sydney viewing area, 67,536 had watched the programme!