Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Decameron’ On Netflix, A Dark Comedy About Class Conflict And The Plague Of The Black Death

You wouldn’t think that the Black Death would be good fodder for comedy, but given it’s been almost 700 years since it occurred, we think there’s been enough distance from it to see it in a funny way. A new Netflix series, loosely based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s collection of short stories published seven centuries ago, used the plague as a basis for some dark comedy.

Opening Shot: “FIRENZE, ITALIA. 1348.” A crow lands on a windowsill, and a young boy immediately hits it with a rock. As it plunges to the ground, we see random bodies.

The Gist: The Black Death has taken hold in Florence, and the bodies can’t be scooped up fast enough. The “pestilence” has hit people of all classes, and the Visconte Leonardo of Fiesole (Davy Eduard King) has invited the city’s nobility and their servants to his Tuscan villa, in the “beautiful, not-infected countryside.”

Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) is going because she will become Leonardo’s betrothed when she arrives, and her handmaiden Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) is doing everything she can to make sure her mistress has everything she needs. Filomena (Jessica Plummer), one of the few surviving children of Eduardo (John Hannah) is invited, but her handmaiden Licisca (Tanya Reynolds) won’t leave the pestilence-ridden Eduardo’s side. Filomena forces Licisca to go when she assumes her father has died, though she doesn’t know for sure.

New Shows & Movies To Watch This Weekend: Netflix’s ‘The Decameron’ + More

The not-super-bright Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) is being advised by his doctor, Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel) to go, based on the illnesses he sees in Tindaro’s urine and stool, the latter of which Tindaro hands to him in a hankie. Panfilo (Karan Gill) has to deal with his wife Neifile (Lou Gala) praying about everything.

On the way to Tuscany, Licisca and Filomena get in a dispute about feeding bread to someone in need, and Licisca accidentally pushes her mistress over the side of a bridge into the river. No worries; she’ll just pretend to be Filomena. As the others make their way, Sirisco (Tony Hale), the villa’s caretaker, has a bigger issue to deal with: Leonardo recently died from the plague, and he’s been busy burying him in a shallow grave. He and his wife Stratillia (Leila Farzad) are the only staff members who haven’t died. Sirisco needs the invited nobles to keep believing Leonardo is alive so they can prove how indispensable they are to whoever claims the estate.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Decameron , created by Kathleen Jordan and based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th century short story collection, reminds us quite a bit of the Dark Ages season of Miracle Workers . One of the show’s other EPs is Jenji Kohan, and there are elements of the same dark humor we saw on Kohan’s Orange Is The New Black .

Our Take: As we see by the end of Episode 1 of The Decameron , the supposedly peaceful, pestilence-free villa in Tuscany is going to be anything but. People are hiding secrets, and have to make deals when others find out. Pestilence-ridden commoners are constantly ready to plunder the estate. And everyone is horny for each other.

11 Best New Shows on Netflix: July 2024’s Top Upcoming Series to Watch

This is all supposed to be darkly funny, but it isn’t. There are tiny bits of humor here and there, like when Panfilo jokes that if they miss the welcome meal, they’ll be subjected to “pasta, pasta, pasta,” but those moments are fleeting and the lines ultimately don’t land.

What the show is trying to get by on is the fact that everyone there has ulterior motives, they say modern phrases like “kicked to the curb” and that, well, everyone is horny for each other. But there’s nothing else there to really hang onto, as far as these characters’ stories are concerned.

The characters who have the most potential are Misia and Licisca, not just because of the performances by Jackson and Reynolds, respectively, but because it seems like the two of them have some backstories and a sense of loyalty and loss. Misia’s officiousness when it comes to dealing with Sirisco has as much to do with who she brought to the villa, and we’re not talking about Pampinea. And with Licisca, she knows her time playing nobility is limited, but as she tells Panfilo, who is on to her deception, “I’m going to do what I like in the time I have left.”

Most of the rest of the characters, though, are still hard to read. Pampinea is still under the impression that Leonardo is alive, but he may not want her because she’s (gasp!) 28. That seems to be the extent of her character so far. Neifile prays a lot but seems to be in love with a seat on a foot-driven water pump. Tindaro is sick and awkward; Dioneo wants to have sex with everyone.

As the plague encroaches on the villa, and the group inside establishes their mini-society, we may get to know these people better. Kohan managed to wrangle OITNB ‘s huge cast by giving us flashbacks about most of the main characters, and that may be something she has guided Jordan to do here. But we don’t know if we even like these characters enough to stick around and find out more about them.

CLICK HERE TO GET EMAILS FROM DECIDER

Sex and Skin: Not much skin, but both Neifile and Panfilo show that sex is on everyone’s minds at the villa.

Parting Shot: Licisca gets a shock when a very-much-alive Filomena shows up at the door of the villa.

Sleeper Star: We liked Saoirse-Monica Jackson in Derry Girls and she’s equally fun to watch here as the eager-to-please Misia.

Most Pilot-y Line: We like Depeche Mode, but the soundtrack seems to be very Depeche Mode-heavy.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re giving The Decameron a lukewarm recommendation because there are characters that we do want to follow in this dark comedy, and we have confidence that the storytelling will help deepen the characters we don’t love. But the comedic elements don’t hit most of the time, and we wonder how much effort it will take viewers to really buy into the goings on at this Tuscan villa.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

For more entertainment news and streaming recommendations, visit decider.com