‘The Decameron’ series review: Millennial take on Boccaccio’s bawdy tales is hampered by uneven tempo and sporadic laughs

A still from ‘The Decameron’

Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron featured prominently in my History of English Literature course. The 14^th century classic was considered inspiration for the various greats of English writing including Shelley and Shakespeare. The Decameron was part of study, just like the gentle knight pricking on the plain in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.

There did not seem anything even vaguely adaptable in The Decameron, a collection of hundred tales told by seven women and three men hiding out in a country villa outside Florence hoping to wait out the plague that was sweeping over Europe. The plague cut a swath of destruction through the medieval world, bringing about great economic, social and spiritual change, which makes the drawing of parallels between the pandemic from 1346 to 1353 to the one in 2020 depressingly easy.

And so we have Netflix’s The Decameron, which loosely follows Boccaccio’s work, quickly becoming its own beast. It is 1348 and people are dropping dead like flies, in Florence as elsewhere, of bubonic plague. A nobleman, Eduardo (John Hannah), is at death’s door. While his daughter, Filomena (Jessica Plummer), is not very sympathetic, her maid, Licisca (Tanya Reynolds, brilliant), worries about Eduardo and tries all sorts of bizarre cures to make him well.

When an invitation to wait out the plague in the country at Villa Santa comes, Filomena sees it as an escape and convinces Licisca that it is their best option, especially after Eduardo’s death. The guests at Villa Santa include tone-deaf Pampinea (Zosia Mamet), her enabler maid, Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), a hypochondriac nobleman, Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin), his doctor, Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), wily Panfilo (Karan Gill) and his pious wife Neifile (Lou Gala). Stratilia (Leila Farzad), the cook, and the steward, Sirisco (Tony Hale), are run ragged looking after the nobles and their ridiculous demands.

Everyone has their own agenda. An old maid at 28, Pampinea sees her betrothal to Leonardo, the owner of Villa Santa, as her validation. Unfortunately, with Leonardo strangely absent, she has to work out different ways of keeping her status. Misia, though fiercely loyal to Pampinea, suffers from her uncaring ways. Neifile is plagued by lust for all her piety while Panfilo has his secrets. There are mercenaries, wicked clergymen, scammers and thieves, all looking to relieve Villa Santa of its riches.  

A still from ‘The Decameron’

The noblemen are not so noble and more than willing to cut the other’s throat for profit. At different points of time, people try to take ownership of Villa Santa without much success. There is a proper bust-up at the end with piles of dead bodies, but there is hope as well. The rock soundtrack including music by Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Duran Duran and The Zombies is fun. However, anachronistic period pieces with modern language, steamy sex and extreme violence are not such a startling thing anymore and so subversions need to be backed by solid content.

While The Decameron has the sex, language and gore, it does not have the requisite smarts to carry it off. And so you are left with a mildly amusing show, which does not do the talented cast any favours. Wonder what period piece content creators will turn their acquisitive beady eyes on next — Dante’s Divine Comedy perhaps?

The Decameron is streaming on Netflix