was released in 1997, was a radical departure from the previous seven. The new director, Giacomo Battiato, took the show in a new direction, returning to the origins of the Sicilian mafia in the 1950s in a prequel to the action of previous seasons. This new plot line would continue into the ninth season, which was set in the 1960s. Season eight contained only two episodes, a trend which would continue for the remainder of the long-running series. Audience response was generally positive, and the show won several international prizes. The number of viewers was 7.5 million and 8.8 million viewers respectively, and at 100 minutes each, the episodes of the eighth and ninth seasons were the longest in the series to date. New screenwriters were hired as well, with Alessandro Sermoneta and Mimmo Rafele joining the project. The only personal connection to previous seasons was the story of the young Tano Cariddi (Primo Reggiani) and his sister Maria (Ana Torrent). The male lead role was played by Raoul Bova as Carabiniere Carlo Arcuti. The choice was unusual in that Bova had appeared as young commissioner Gianni Breda in season seven (40 years later in the series). Other actors from previous seasons also reappeared, most notably Renato Mori, once in the role of Vice-Commissioner Giuseppe Altero, partner to Corrado Cattani, now as the aging mafia boss Don Calogero Albanese. The actor Tony Sperandeo on the other hand, did not change sides: previously killer Santino Rocchi in season six, now mafia henchman Turi Mondello. The female leading role of Baroness Barbara Greenberg Altamura was given to German actress Anja Kling. The story begins with a brutal power struggle within the local mafia of a small Sicilian town. The power-hungry Pietro Favignana (Luca Zingaretti) kills the aging Don Albanese and rapes his daughter Rosario (Daniela "Mietta" Miglietta), forces her to marry him, and thus becomes the new mob boss. Favignana then goes head to head with the leader of a planned development project, Baron Francesco Altamura (Claudio Gora), who refuses to allow the Mafia to get involved in the deal. In order to blackmail him and his wife Baroness Barbara Greenberg Altamura (Anja Kling), Favignana kidnaps their son Paul and has the young Tano "Tanuzzo" Cariddi guard him on an abandoned estate. With the help of the German consulate and the undercover police captain Carlo Arcuti, the boy is rescued and the