In the Pope's Eye

In the Pope's Eye (Il Pap'occhio, 1980) is an Italian comedy you can watch online on iFILM. The Vatican is worried: young people are drifting away from the Church. The solution — launch an entertainment television channel and reel them back in. A priest is sent to recruit popular TV host Renzo Arbore and get him to build a production team from scratch.

What Arbore assembles is anything but devout. The lineup includes Roberto Benigni more than a decade before Life Is Beautiful, Isabella Rossellini, Mariangela Melato, and Diego Abatantuono, all loosely riffing on the format of an actual Italian variety programme. Arbore also directs and plays himself — turning the whole thing into a show-within-a-show where even Vatican television can't stay clean of intrigue. Stream In the Pope's Eye online on iFILM.