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There’s Nothing Quite Like The Decameron
It’s thrilling to see something so idiosyncratic on TV. If only it were more successful.
In the first episode of The Decameron, Netflix’s new series about a group of medieval Italians eluding the plague at a Tuscan villa, a wailing man clutching his beloved’s corpse galvanizes an aging spinster’s search for love; someone gets hurled into a river, inspiring a very silly identity swap; and a maidservant named Misia pivots from sketch-comedy levels of obedience into excruciating grief. The original work is a frame story with very little plot for its ten narrators, but that structure disappears in the Netflix adaptation, although elements of its emotional impact do seep into the show’s tonal mixture and general character types. The TV series stays with those central nobles and their servants (very, very loosely adapted from the narrators of the original work),and the action of the season follows what happens to them as they all converge on this villa for the marriage of Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) to Don Leonardo (Davy Eduard King), desperate for some distraction from the plague consuming Florence.
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