The Octopus (Seasons 1–10)

La Piovra — The Octopus (1984) — watch online on iFILM. Italy's RAI commissioned this landmark crime series across ten seasons and 48 episodes, with the first installments directed by Damiano Damiani and Florestano Vancini and written with input from prosecutors who were actively working anti-mafia cases.

Commissioner Corrado Cattani (Michele Placido) refuses to accept that the Sicilian mob and the Italian state have long since reached a private understanding. His target is Don Tano Cariddi (Remo Girone) — a man who never raises his voice, never appears in court records, and never loses. Every time Cattani closes in, a phone call from Rome makes the case disappear. The violence here is rarely loud; most of it happens in offices, in handshakes, in dropped charges.

When the series aired in the Soviet Union in 1988, Cattani became one of the most talked-about television characters of the era — audiences had rarely seen a fictional investigator who actually went all the way. A crime drama where the procedural and the political hit with equal weight. Stream all seasons of The Octopus online on iFILM.