‘The Decameron’ Review: Black Comedy About the Black Death Is Bingeable But Messy
This Netflix series is full of ridiculous people doing ridiculous things. It's entertaining, sure, but lacks a real narrative—or any serious laughs.
The Decameron, a black comedy helmed by creator and showrunner Kathleen Jordan, has a lot of potential. The series is set during Florence’s bubonic plague of 1348 and features a likable cast of comedic actors, including Tony Hale, Zosia Mamet, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Tanya Reynolds and Jessica Plummer. But the show never figures out its tone, confusingly veering between stylistic choices that never quite add up to something that fully satisfies the viewer. It’s purportedly a comedy, but many episodes clock in at nearly an hour, and the series’ unsexy obsession with sex feels like something written by a group of frat boys on a trip to Amsterdam.
As the show opens, a horrific pandemic has hit Florence, causing nobles and servants alike to die in the streets. A group of surviving nobles decamp to an ornate villa outside the city, each laying some sort of claim to its ownership thanks to their connection with its lord, who has died just before their arrival. The show is apparently based on a 14th-century work by Giovanni Boccaccio, also titled The Decameron, about wealthy people sheltering in the Villa Santa during the Black Death. In the book, they tell each other stories. In the series, the characters, who also include several servants and a hot doctor named Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), get up to random antics and are threatened by mercenaries and lewd interlopers.
Some of the characters are more interesting than others. Spoiled rich girl Pampinea (Mamet) fakes a marriage to the dead duke with the help of her serving girl Misia (Jackson) and then ends up pregnant by the villa’s caretaker Sirisco (Hale). Licisca (Reynolds) leaves her mistress Filomena (Plummer) for dead and takes on her identity—before Filomena shows up and is resigned to the kitchens. There’s also a married couple, Panfilo (Karan Gill) and Neifile (Lou Gala), who are respectively gay and devout-plus-horny. Hypochondriac noble Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) is as obsessed with Dioneo as the women. There are more, some of whom pop in or die midway through the show, and it’s ultimately hard to keep track of everyone’s storyline.
The Decameron seems to be attempting to be a social parable (or something) about the haves and the have-nots. It potentially wants to tap into our collective trauma about pandemics, but there are no lessons to be taught or learned here. These are just a bunch of ridiculous people doing ridiculous things without the structure of a real narrative—or any serious laughs. It’s entertaining, sure, and easy to binge, but Jordan never quite hones in on what exactly The Decameron is.
Reynolds, known for Sex Education, is a standout, as is Jackson, who deserves a better follow-up to Derry Girls than this. But Hale, who is best when playing ridiculous, slightly unhinged characters, isn’t as compelling as an everyday guy. The series is as confused as the viewer feels watching it, which is not to say that there aren’t reasonably clever moments. You can understand why the cast would buy into this based on the scripts (and the promise of shooting in Italy). The storyline takes several turns before it arrives at the finale, although it’s unclear if there’s an expectation of a second season, especially since several key characters are dead by the time the final episode arrives. There’s a good TV show somewhere in here, but it never quite emerges, struck down by a plague of its own making.