Put down your Boccaccio, which I know you picked up the instant you heard Netflix had commissioned a series called The Decameron, keen to refresh your memory of the 14th-century Italian doorstop. A re-read is not needed at this time. The series retains only Giovanni B’s framing device; 10 characters fleeing plague-ridden Florence and taking refuge in a countryside villa. In the book, they each tell a story a night to keep themselves entertained. Here, they have been invited by wealthy Count Leonardo to simply get on with life. It soon becomes as messy and soapy as you would expect of 10 strangers trying to settle down together – not least as one of them is an extremely attractive doctor.
That’s Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), the servant of hypochondriac manbambino (“I thought my excrement looked extra black this morning”) Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin). They are both drawn to Licisca (Tanya Reynolds, Sex Education’s alien-pornography lover), a handmaiden posing as her padrona Filomena (Jessica Plummer) since the spoilt latter fell off a bridge on their way to the villa (a rescue attempt neglected, given the opportunities presented by her absence). Licisca is drawn to Dioneo, but must try to elicit a marriage proposal from his boss to secure her future.
The rest of the group comprises: sexlessly married couple Neifile (Lou Gala) and Panfilo (Karan Gill), a religious obsessive in a permanent state of sexual arousal and a gay man, respectively; the villa’s two remaining house servants, Sirisco (Tony Hale) and Stratilia (Leila Farzad), who are keeping secret the fact that their master Leonardo died of plague just before his guests arrived, lest they be turfed out; and the bananas duo of Leonardo’s fiancee Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) and her maid Misia (Derry Girls’ Saoirse-Monica Jackson). Neurotic Pampinea is desperate to get married before she ages out of the system (“I’m 28!” she mouths silently to Licisca, who reels backwards in horror), while Misia simply fibrillates on the edge of madness at all times. Adding grief at the death of her girlfriend (whom she smuggled into the villa in a barrel) does not help the situation at all.
So. There’s plenty going on at all times, which is fun. There’s a bit part for John Hannah as Filomena’s dying dad, assorted bandits, fanatics, sword fights, brawls and, of course, buboes. But The Decameron is billed as a dramedy and, while it looks like the cast themselves had a whale of a time, I cannot say that I laughed out loud, or even smiled much at any point. It’s like a toothless Hunderby – which is a good thing in the sense that I don’t think any of us have the strength for a toothed version, but that shouldn’t really figure in a comedy’s assessment.
Neither, if we are looking for subtext, does it really deliver on the drama front. There may, at some point, have been an intended commentary on class politics and warfare, or parallels to be drawn with our experiences of Covid. Its creator, Kathleen Jordan, has said that one of her incentives for writing the series came early on in the pandemic, when various celebrities complained how unhappy they were imprisoned in their multimillion dollar mansions. Fourteenth-century Italy seemed like a good place to transpose the problem and interrogate the differences between the haves and have nots. But not much of that concern has made it into the final version.
The success of Bridgerton has meant that the schedules are now flooded with historical content of all kinds, from the great The Great to the impressive Mary & George, to Sally Wainwright’s unexpected entry into the field with Renegade Nell, to the eccentric but endearing My Lady Jane (what if the Nine Day Queen had lived?!). The Decameron falls between too many stools to be a triumph. But it is full of nice performances and lovely gowns (jewel-toned medieval drapery always beats 18th-century pastel puffery for me) and is good enough to mark out a place for itself even in the middle of the current glut of similar offerings. Have fun.
• The Decameron is on Netflix now
