La piovra
Italian television drama series about the Mafia (1984-2001)
La Piovra (Italian pronunciation: [la ˈpjɔːvra]; English: The Octopus, referring to the Mafia) is an Italian television drama series about the Mafia. The series was directed by various directors who each worked on different seasons, including Damiano Damiani (first season), Florestano Vancini (second season), Luigi Perelli (from the third to the seventh season and again on the tenth season), and Giacomo Battiato (from the eighth to the ninth seasons).
The music was written by Riz Ortolani (first season), Ennio Morricone (from the second to the seventh season and again on the tenth season), and by Paolo Buonvino (from the eighth to the ninth season).
The show was successfully exported to over eighty countries during and after its sixteen-year run. All ten seasons were released in Australia on DVD with English subtitles by Aztec International Entertainment, having originally aired on the Special Broadcasting Service television channel. It was also broadcast on MHz Networks in the United States. The first three seasons were shown in the UK on Channel 4.
The TV drama was successful in the Eastern Bloc, where it appeared on state TV in 1986 and in Albania, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, where it appeared in the end of the 1980s (in its seventh season, the show featured Bulgarian actor Stefan Danailov). In Portugal, it was re-broadcast by RTP Memória.
La Piovra is still considered to be the most famous Italian television series in the world, and all seasons received widespread public approval, with an average of 10 million and a peak of 15 million viewers.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “La piovra” is italian television drama series about the Mafia (1984-2001). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through piovra, Italian and television, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “italian television drama series about the Mafia (1984-2001)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q680062. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “La piovra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.