A Bird’s-Eye View of Northern Italy

Imagine climbing on board a helicopter in Tuscany and being told you’re about to tour Northern Italy for the next hour.

On your itinerary: the entire geographic area starting from Florence to the Alpine foothills. Along the way, you find yourself zigzagging from west to east and back again, from expansive farmlands to gnarled vineyards to sun-washed beaches lined with row after row of sunbathers and yachts floating in turquoise harbors.

“Visions of Italy: Northern Style” (at 8 tonight, KCET-TV) takes the viewer on a dizzying bird’s-eye view of a magnificent landscape over historic cities and lush fields without pausing very long at any particular destination.

In Verona, for example, one catches a glimpse of an elegant, crumpled Roman arena as narrator Franca Barciesi offers pithy, often pretentious commentary (“One can almost hear the clashing swords of Montagues and Capulets ... “) before it’s off to elegant, cool Treviso.

Perhaps realizing the limitations of a helicopter-mounted camera, producer and writer Sam Toperoff makes a concerted effort to include not only rooftops and scenic areas but also images of people. Cross-country skiers in Livigno, staffers at Benetton and a frantically waving family in a field at Rocca Maggiore provide welcome human faces.

Divided into three segments, the program is accompanied by recognizable Italian music selections.

The journey ends at the pristine, glacier-fed waters of Lake Como, followed by a series of postcard snapshots of the trip’s highlights. Like most postcards, they only capture faint memories of a region. As narrator Barciesi says, “To capture the soul of Italy would take a lifetime.”