But, like “Clue,” which delivered some genuinely fantastic theater while mercilessly lampooning detective-story clichés, this version of “The Decameron” takes a loose and expansive approach to adaptation. Sure, it’s satire. But the result is so joyfully unfaithful — so adept at rounding out characters that should be flat — that it wraps back around again to something like homage.
The series wisely turns Boccaccio’s framing device into the main event. The guests in this version aren’t storytellers; they’re the ones driving the action. Still, 10 young people with competing agendas, financial interests and religious beliefs do end up hanging out at a luxurious estate (called Villa Santa in the series) to escape the plague. These include two of the villa’s surviving employees: Tony Hale plays Sirisco, a harried, semi-competent steward covering as best he can for his dead boss Leonardo’s absence as the guests he invited start to arrive. (Also like “Clue,” “The Decameron” is powered by the problem of a pivotal but absent host.) Sirisco’s co-worker Stratilia (Leila Farzad), the estate’s secretive, no-nonsense cook, participates in his ruse out of desperation; the roads are dangerous, and they have nowhere else to go.
The guests include Leonardo’s insufferable fiancée, Pampinea (Zosia Mamet), an heiress whose fortune is her main attraction, as well as her slavishly devoted maid, Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson of “Derry Girls”). Panfilo (Karan Gill), a gay bon vivant in a marriage of convenience, persuades his extremely religious wife, Neifile (Lou Gala), to accept Leonardo’s invitation to Villa Santa partly to escape his family’s recent financial ruin. Licisca (Tanya Reynolds), a clever and humane maidservant forced to serve her master’s bratty and tyrannical daughter, Filomena (Jessica Plummer), ends up impersonating the latter to gain admission to the villa. And Douggie McMeekin plays a dim and tedious prig named Tindaro, who uses his riches to fund his hypochondria. He travels everywhere with his good-looking doctor, Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), a Lothario who keeps his boss half-poisoned.
It’s tempting to single out specific actors for praise: Mamet for her indelible portrayal of a repellent, love-obsessed narcissist. Or Gala for her sympathetic take on a character so absurdly religious it would be easy to make her a simpleton (or a joke). Or Reynolds for the feral gusto with which — dressed as a noblewoman and parrying a dreary man’s advances — she interrupts a speech about her favorite pope to scream “Fish!,” pluck one out and thwack it merrily against the fountain to kill it. (All while the two men in the scene debate whether women are evil.) Gill, whose character starts as a joke, is a standout, and it’s delightful to watch Hale’s take on petulant, codependent servility clash with Jackson’s as their characters squabble over turf.
The strength of every one of these performances drives home how long it’s been since a series delivered a really stellar comedy ensemble. Not just a solid show, but a group effort marked by a shared and truly strange comedic sensibility. (Like “Clue”!)
There are more recent precursors, of course. Christopher Guest’s films and “Arrested Development” come to mind. So do “Orange Is the New Black” and “Glow.” (It’s no coincidence that “The Decameron” is also executive-produced by Jenji Kohan.) “The Decameron” shares the blithe irreverence with which “Blackadder” and Monty Python approached history and abounds in contemporary touches we know from “Bridgerton” or “Dickinson.” The soundtrack does exactly what you’d expect from a series that scores a medieval text with contemporary songs.
What really elevates the series, however, is its tactical restraint. The dialogue is awfully witty for a production this broad; these aren’t all buffoons. The satire is less savage than sad, and the apocalyptic backdrop lends even the silliest conflicts some gravitas. This is a sure-footed production that knows how to marry satire with seriousness.
I didn’t expect that from a program that looks, on paper, like a dutiful if belated response to the coronavirus pandemic. If covid taught us anything about how humans process disaster, it’s that no one wants to talk about a pandemic once the worst is over. I think often about how many of us “rediscovered” the 1918 flu pandemic during the worst of the outbreak — and how surprised the non-historians among us were by how completely it seemed to have vanished from public consciousness. It’s no longer mysterious. Pandemics are horrible. They’re also, and this is key, embarrassing. The things we did in the name of self-preservation — remember sanitizing groceries? The theories that turned out to be wrong. The hiding. The moralizing. The masking (in every sense).
“Clue” and “The Decameron” both feature folks trapped in fancy estates who start seeing each other as threats as civilization and its rules melt away. In “Clue,” that was a potent but silly premise, obviously based on stories such as Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None.” “The Decameron” shares that antic sensibility, and it tells an equally compelling story. But I found myself watching with a different filter than the one I used to have for stories set during the bubonic plague. One does not feel above these characters as they stuff flowers in their noses, ward off the pestilence with onions, and flounder, amid the apocalypse, for pleasure and meaning. One feels, rather, a kinship.
The Decameron premieres July 25 on Netflix.
