There’s Nothing Like It on TV

Within the first episode of The Decameron, Netflix’s new sequence a few group of medieval Italians eluding the plague at a Tuscan villa, a wailing man clutching his beloved’s corpse galvanizes an growing old spinster’s seek for love; somebody will get hurled right into a river, inspiring a really foolish identification swap; and a maidservant named Misia pivots from sketch-comedy ranges of obedience into excruciating grief. In different phrases, The Decameron is an odd grasp, careening between hilarity, tragedy, horniness, and a fatalism so excessive it’s virtually giddy. There’s no straightforward comp for it on tv proper now, no main line of affect for this present that may barely settle right into a style for greater than a scene or two and buildings its plot in hop-skipping jolts of alarm and reprieve. It’s thrilling to look at one thing so idiosyncratic. Nevertheless it’s additionally not solely profitable.

The Netflix sequence from showrunner Kathleen Jordan is impressed by the medieval Italian textual content by Boccaccio a few group of younger nobles isolating from the Black Loss of life who inform tales to go the time: love tales, raunchy comedies, tragedies, morality tales. The unique work is a body story with little or no plot for its ten narrators, however that construction disappears within the Netflix adaptation, though parts of its emotional influence do seep into the present’s tonal combination and normal character varieties. The TV sequence stays with these central nobles and their servants (very, very loosely tailored from the narrators of the unique work), and the motion of the season follows what occurs to them as all of them converge on this villa for the wedding of Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) to Don Leonardo (Davy Eduard King), determined for some distraction from the plague consuming Florence.

There’s a lot to like concerning the present that follows. The Decameron is stuffed with concepts about its resonance with up to date occasions, nevertheless it performs them out with out ever tipping its hand too aggressively or betraying its personal historic setting for the sake of constructing a degree. There’s humor and a wry directness on this story about aristocrats holing up in immense luxurious whereas their servants labor to supply them with lavish feasts and the world collapses round them. The servants are vastly extra in contact with actuality, however they’re additionally caught in a category system that has actual advantages for them, they usually don’t need to depart. A lot of the sequence performs like a farce: Folks get stowed away in wine casks, tackle stolen identities, and make far-fetched makes an attempt to take management of the large property. Everybody’s hiding secrets and techniques, and components of The Decameron are constructed like a comedy of errors, with somebody’s absurd determination — burying a physique within the backyard and pretending that character remains to be alive, for instance — spreading out into ridiculous outcomes for everybody else.

However there’s a whistling previous the graveyard aspect, too, and because the season goes on, the present swerves deeper and deeper into existential angst and overwhelming grief. The physique depend rises. Desperation units in. All of the topsy-turvy playfulness of maids pretending to be girls, or an absurdly religious spouse lusting after a shirtless member of the decrease courses, begins to get snagged on jagged truths about how grim every thing is. Most of that whiplash is purposeful, and the performers play the high-wire tone remarkably effectively. Mamet’s Pampinea, a cheerful monster whose hopes of marriage are dwindling because the inhabitants of Florence quickly falls useless round her, and Saoirse-Monica Jackson as her devoted servant almost vibrate off the display screen with pent-up nervousness. Amar Chadha-Patel makes a wonderfully swoon-worthy Dioneo, physician to Douggie McMeekin’s Tindaro, who’s so obnoxious it’s laborious to grasp how he survives past the primary night time.

At its finest, The Decameron is ready to seize the weird and acquainted up to date sensation that too many intense emotions are occurring on the similar time. The characters are perpetually making an attempt to juggle their very own petty wants with a way of looming doom, and there’s virtually by no means time to course of one particular person’s loss of life earlier than one other pressing disaster arrives. There are moments of luxurious and hilarity contained in the property partitions, whilst everybody’s painfully conscious of all of the loss of life round them, nearer than any need to admit. There’s additionally a continuing prickling discomfort with the overwhelming ache and poverty and the way unfair it’s that some folks have a haven they’ll disguise inside. The Decameron doesn’t must make direct comparisons to now; the items usually are not laborious to place collectively.

However simply as usually, the present’s unpredictable mixture of plots and tones sits a little bit too lengthy earlier than shifting someplace new, or it jolts someplace out of the blue with out a sense of objective. Whereas Pampinea freaks out about what’s being served for dinner, Licisca (Tanya Reynolds) is desperately making an attempt to maintain a secret and Dioneo’s coping with an explosive Tindaro, so everybody’s aggravated when bandits pound on the door, interrupting them, and this occurs usually sufficient that the bandits begin to really feel repetitive moderately than just like the looming menace they’re meant to be. When some characters die, it feels completely unhappy; when others die, it seems like a tone the present is now lacking and undecided find out how to substitute. In whole, The Decameron feels stretched past its capability to maintain any momentum, with early occasions surrounded with an excessive amount of padding and later occasions showing like sudden escalations that wanted extra time to construct. The items are all there, in different phrases, however they don’t at all times match collectively in addition to they need to.

All of this nonetheless makes The Decameron one of many extra attention-grabbing new Netflix sequence of the final 12 months, particularly when a few of its established dramas are doing effectively however newer exhibits have did not take maintain. And particularly within the first half of the season, The Decameron is enjoyable sufficient to enchantment to audiences who usually are not within the temper for a pandemic-hued bummer. The center of the present, although, is in what occurs when shit will get actual. The members of this foolish medieval loss of life farce are pressured to understand that irrespective of how far they attempt to run, there’s no escape from mortality.