The show focuses on the Martini family living in the fictional neighbourhood of Poggiofiorito (literally Flowery knoll), a quiet residential zone in Rome's suburbs.
The family is completed by the extravagant and noisy Southern maid Concetta "Cettina" Gargiulo and by Lele's teen nephew Alberto, who lives with his uncle and cousins while his parents are divorcing.
Alice suffers a miscarriage and is told she is never going to be able to carry future pregnancies just as Nilde gives birth to a mixed race baby boy she names after her brother, Lele Junior.
Guido becomes fond of the Martini, particularly Libero and Annuccia (who projects a transference of her father onto the young doctor) and starts to consider them as the family he never had since he grew up in an orphanage.
Marcello, Guido's best friend, takes over Alice's job at Radio Tua whilst Cettina finds out that Giacinto married another woman after disappearing for months without a word.
However, upon finding he is also the director of Torellhonor, a renowned funeral home hailing from Lombardy, Cettina is concerned about what people might think as well as being superstitious about a death-related job.
At the same time, the romance between Maria and Guido seems to be over due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, but she runs to declare her love for him by shouting it at the train station, following Lele's example at the airport.
Guido and Maria's relationship is hindered by the arrival of Franco Caselli who has come to train medical volunteers for the humanitarian organisation 'Doctors Against War', an in-universe adaptation of Doctors Without Borders.
In order not to lose his decent pension as a former railwayman and to leave his grandchildren in financial difficulties, Grandpa Libero and Grandma Enrica decide to get married.
On the day of the wedding, Maria and Guido inform their family and friends of their plan to fly to Nigeria with Doctors Against War while Cettina finds out she's pregnant after several unsuccessful attempts.
The fifth series opens with the arrest of Andrea Biglietti, Aunt Nilde's boyfriend, who was defrauded by a colleague in the illegal acquisition of some villas in the residential neighborhood of Poggio Fiorito.
Cettina, who has since started working for the competition at Zinco Brothers Funeral Service (played by Italian comic duo Lillo & Greg), returns to Rome with Eros to win back Augusto's love and save Torellhonor.
Grandpa Libero is no longer the mayor of Poggio Fiorito, and has inherited a farmhouse in Apulia, where Ciccio plans to work together with Miranda, Aunt Nilde, Andrea and his cousin Lele Jr.
The grandparents then move to Apulia to help Nilde and Andrea with the farmhouse while Ciccio falls into a destructive depressive spiral from which he will recover only after meeting Trasy, a Romany girl and a horse trainer at the local riding school.
Ave Battiston, Guido's biological mother who abandoned him as a newborn, tracks him down in Rome and tries to become part of his life by regularly visiting the clinic.
In the end, it is discovered that Cettina has survived and has become a rich entrepreneur in the culinary world in the United States, but has lost her memory and initially does not recognize the Martinis when she meets them by chance in Rome.
Annuccia, who is now fifteen, faces the ups and downs of her teenage years and is taking Maria and Ciccio's role from previous seasons in her relationship with the pre-teens Elena and Bobò.
Palù convinces Maria to join them at the airport — where they arrive late anyway — in the middle of the preparations for Lele and Bianca's wedding in a mountain chalet together with friends and relatives.
Unfortunately, Marco and Maria's engagement announcement is marred by the discovery that the Poggio Fiorito residential neighborhood is the result of a building scam and they are all at risk of losing their homes if they don't pay the very expensive fine for the crime in which they were unwittingly complicit.
Entrepreneur and architect Fulvio Magnani offers to buy the entire neighbourhood with the intention of razing it to the ground and building a luxury country club.
Guenda Pacifico (who is in a relationship with Gus, Bianca's ex-husband) and Tiziano Corradi, the new owners of Villa Aurora, the polyclinic where Lele and Oscar also work, want to transform the clinic into a private medical center.
Annuccia announces that she wants to be called Anna now and begins a relationship with Emiliano, a tattoo artist who saved her from an attack by some thugs in a bad area during one of her deliveries as a rider.
When Maria gets back together with Marco (who in the meantime has gotten a job in New York), Roberto allies himself with his father, but both are stopped and arrested by Armando when scams in their business emerge.
Giada came to Italy illegally to look for her little brother and eventually decided to live with the family that adopted him after having tracked him down with Maria's help, moving to Udine.
Grandpa Libero is entrusted to take care of Maddalena, a sheltered and very devoted woman who will start working as an au pair at the Martini house.
Their family idyll is ruined by a one-night stand between Sara and Andrea, who in addition to taking care of the renovations of their future home is also the father of Paolo, Bobò's best friend, who comes out with Lele's support.
[8] The reason for such a large number of episodes was due to the fact that the series was initially conceived to be broadcast in day-time (morning-afternoon), but then the director of Raiuno decided to schedule it in prime time on Sunday.
Given the absence of Scarpati, Lino Banfi returned to be the lead protagonist for all the episodes of the ninth season, and Flavio Parenti joined the main cast in the role of a new family doctor, Lorenzo Martini.
Christian or conservative newspapers harshly criticized the fiction: at the time, in fact, there was a great debate in public opinion and in parliament regarding LGBT rights in Italy.
In the reduced version, the scenes of a poker game organized clandestinely by Giulio were eliminated, during which Libero starts to mock the speak patterns of a stuttering player.