The famous tome by 14th century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio that inspired a controversial 1971 film by Italian provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini is now a Netflix comedy series, and the weird thing is that it makes perfect sense.
How to watch The Decameron season 1 in the UK
All eight episodes of The Decameron are currently streaming in the UK exclusively on Netflix.
The Decameron: Season 1
What is The Decameron about?
The year is 1348, and we find ourselves in the sumptuous Villa Santa outside Florence, where a group of nobles have gathered to ride out the latest onset of the Black Plague. To amuse themselves, they swap stories – and that’s the gist of Boccaccio’s book, a collection of 100 surprisingly horny short stories that range from comedy to tragedy. Creator and showrunner Kathleen Jordan (Teenage Bounty Hunters) steers the whole thing into class-conscious Masque of the Red Death territory, however, as their insular little bacchanalia soon falls to infighting and anarchy. It’s a comedy!
The cast of The Decameron
Zosia Mamet is Pampinea, the lady of the house; Saoirse-Monica Jackson is Misia, her mistreated servant; Tanya Reynolds is Licisca, servant to Jessica Plummer’s Filomena; Amar Chadha-Patel is physician Dioneo, companion to nobleman Tindaro, played by Douggie McMeekin; Tony Hale is house steward Sirisco; Leila Farzad is Stratilia the cook; Lou Gala is the religiously-fixated but sex-crazed noblewoman Neifile; and Karan Gill is Panfilo, her politician husband.
The Decameron trailer
Why we’re excited about The Decameron
What nobody seems to realise is that medieval and early modern literature is absolutely packed to the gills with sex, blood, horror, and laughs. They really saw the wisdom in getting value out of their parchment back then. The Canterbury Tales is an absolute banger, we tell you, as is The Decameron, and a canny creative team with a game cast could wring all manner of currently-relevant comedic grist from its ancient pages. Or it could all be too clever for its own good by half. But we’re hopeful!
