TV Review: "The Decameron" is a Macabre, Absurdist Delight
The Netflix adaptation of Boccaccio's famous collection may not be faithful to tis source material, but it's undeniably entertaining.
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Going into Netflix’s The Decameron–an 8-episode series loosely inspired by Boccaccio’s medieval short story collection of the same name–I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. This was a show, after all, that is on the one hand a quasi-adaptation of one of the most influential works of western literature and on the other stars a number of actors and actresses who are best-known for their comedic performances, including Tony Hale (known for both Arrested Development and Veep) and Zosia Mamet (arguably most famous for her role on Girls). How on Earth, I wondered, was it going to be able to pull this off?
From the moment the opening credits begin it’s clear that this is going to be a show unlike almost any other in the Netflix catalog. I mean, can you think of another series that includes a horde of animated, plague-carrying rats contorting themselves into various beautiful and haunting shapes? I don’t think you can. It concludes (of course) with one of the poor creatures expiring, while another pair continue copulating, heedless of his misery. It’s all so excessive and absurd and macabre and wonderful, giving us insight into the type of series that we’re about to experience.
Things get even wilder and more excessive once the series begins. It quickly becomes clear that the Black Death is ravaging Europe, including the Italian city of Firenze. Faced with almost-certain death, a motley group of ten people–a mixture of nobles and their servants and doctors–undertake a journey to a countryside villa thanks to the invitation of Leonardo. However, unbeknownst to them he’s dead, and the estate is being run (badly) by a steward and a no-nonsense cook. Affairs only become more complicated and messy from there, as the entire series devolves into a madcap soap opera (which is a compliment, by the way). The Decameron becomes a show so consumed by its own macabre absurdity and plot twists that you almost don’t know where to look or who to invest in.
As other critics have noted, The Decameron is one of the very few pieces of media in the post-2020 world to contend with what it means to live in a world reshaped by a pandemic and mass death. It’s this real-world context, I think, that helps to explain why this show is just so much. As one piece summed it up in a remarkably apt title, Netflix’s The Decameron Gorges Itself on Its Own Gleefully Irreverent Feast.” After all, what else is there to do when the world is falling apart except fall into one’s own madness? As the series points out again and again, the old orders that structured the medieval world were flawed and oppressive and, now that the Black Death has shown itself to be a great leveler, there’s no reason to hold to them any longer. As the days and weeks go by, the characters, both the noble and the common, have to grapple with the bleak meaninglessness that the plague has exposed in their worlds and in their worldviews.
Within its eight episodes The Decameron gives us a dizzying array of betrayals and affairs. Among some of the highlights: servant Licisca (Tanya Reynolds) throws her mistress off a bridge and masquerades as her, right up until she makes her own way to the villa; steward Sirisco has a fling with Mamet’s Pampinea, who becomes ever more deranged and egomaniacal as the series goes on, even going so far as to try to burn the cook for a witch. People fuck and betray and murder, and it’s all quite beautiful and terrible and ridiculous (speaking of beauty: Amar Chadha-Patel, who plays the lothario doctor Dioneo, is one of the most strikingly attractive men working in TV today. I’m serious. He’s almost too gorgeous).
Given that each of the eight episodes is roughly an hour, it probably goes without saying that there are quite a lot of hijinks and some equally outlandish performances. Zosia Mamet is of course a delight, perfectly capturing Pampinea's overweening sense of entitlement and brattiness, and she has some great chemistry with Saoirse-Monica Jackson, who is a delightfully baffling bundle of contradictions, with her misplaced loyalty and roving sapphic desires. Tony Hale is perfectly cast as the bumbling yet grasping steward Sirisco, allowing us to see what Veep’s Gary might have been like had he grown a spine. And Douggie McMeekin as Tindaro gives an overwrought performance straight out of a Shakespeare comedy.
All of this isn’t to say that the series doesn’t have some genuine emotional stakes, because it does. Maybe it’s because I’m a queer viewer, but for me Panfilo’s arc reads to me as the most authentic and true. Part of this is because Karan Gill gives what is arguably the most understated performance, largely eschewing the dialed-up-to-eleven antics of everyone else. However, the appeal of his storyline also emerges from its essentially tragic nature. After all, he’s a queer man in a world in which such a thing isn’t even an identity and in which queer desires are condemned by Church and society alike. To make matters even more wrenching, he truly does seem to love his wife, Neifile (Leila Farzad), even if he’s not above jerking it to Dioneo’s shirtless body and having a fling with a messenger. Of all of the characters, though, he seems to have the most self-awareness, and when said messenger tells him matter-of-factly that the world really is a shitty place and there’s nothing to be done about it, Panfilo just laughs. After all, what else can one do in a plague-ridden world in which everything has fallen apart and in which one’s desires can never be fulfilled?
In the end, there’s no real satisfying conclusion, at least not of the type that we might expect. Some of the original company have died (Pampinea, for example, has been put into a barrel and then set on fire by Misia and the absurd Tindaro has sacrificed his life so the cook Stratilia and her son, Leonardo’s bastard, can escape), and others have lived. However, they’ve also left the villa in the hands of the militia, who surprisingly enough, gets to keep it. Our merry band of misfits ends the series by regaling each other with stories which, of course, is the entire premise of the original Decameron.
While this adaptation might take some significant liberties with the source material–so much so that it’s hard to see it as an adaptation at all–there’s still a lot to enjoy here. There’s some biting commentary about the vacuousness and viciousness of the wealthy classes and the ways in which the powerless often buy into systems of power that oppress them. There’s commentary about how the ruthless take advantage of chaos to pursue their own agenda. While not every point lands, and while some of it gets lost in the rather relentless pace of it all, The Decameron at least deserves credit for ambition. We could use more shows like this, and hopefully it is a sign of things to come.