'The Decameron' Is the Sum of Strange Choices

We’re awash in historical series and period pieces these days. I don’t mean the reenactment dramas, but more the likes of The Serpent Queen, Mary & George, To Those About to Die, and My Lady Jane. For the most part, these historical fictions endeavor to add ironic detachment, tactical anachronism, and outright comedy to turn history into a comedy of errors. You might think of this as the effect of shows like The Great that leaven and enhance real historical events with a sense of kookiness and dry wit, particularly in regard to how violent and filthy the past was. As a lover of The Great, I’m happy to see its forms replicated, but some shows do that better than others. My Lady Jane has my heart for this reason, after all, and I think Netflix’s The Decameron could’ve reached that height too if it weren’t for a handful of very weird choices.

For any that don’t know The Decameron is a cycle of 100 short stories written by Giovanni Boccaccio in 1353. It’s essentially a dirtier, bawdier version of The Canterbury Tales and has a very similar conceit of being a story about people telling stories. In the midst of the Black Plague, a slew of Italian nobles decamp for a villa outside of pestilence-ridden Firenze to wait out the plague together in relative safety. To pass the time, each of the many, many characters share tales that run the gamut from erotic to tragic, from funny to poignant, and from mild to wild and this makes up almost the whole of the book. The framing device about the storytellers is present, but not much of note happens within it aside from what’s needed to give context to the storytelling.

When I heard that The Decameron was getting a series adaptation, I was pumped. It could take advantage of the current high season of historical dramedies and neatly marry it with the series-friendly nature of anthologies due to how episodic they already are. They could save on casting by having the actors playing the storytellers play the in-story characters which could also be carefully chosen to enhance the themes of whatever stories they chose to adapt. There’s even a template for this kind of adaptation! The Little Hours adapted some of The Decameron’s stories and absolutely captures the tone this series was striving for: historical setting with ribald, anachronistic acting and a generally cynical point of view. I’m very in the bag for that kind of tone too. It’s simple but effective to juxtapose royal dignity with pratfalls and a filthy mouth.

The Decameron (the series) could’ve done all of the above or some other better idea but instead chose to adapt just the framing device. In some sense, that grants quite a bit of freedom to make up a story, but it boggles my mind that an adaptation of a short story collection would eschew all the stories. There are a few scant times throughout the series where we hear fragments of stories being told here and there, but we never get the full thing. I thought maybe in some roundabout method of adaptation the series would fold the events of the stories into the framing plot, but nope! I checked the summaries of all 100 stories (I hadn’t read them since college) and it doesn’t seem like The Decameron includes them. What it includes is the farcical tone and the anything-goes feeling the short stories have, which is something. To that end, The Decameron succeeds in creating an endlessly iterating farce if not a faithful adaptation of the source material.

The Decameron is very character-driven and its plot develops from the intersection of all the different characters gathering at Villa Santa together. Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) is a spinster of the dusty old age of 28 who takes her hyper-devoted servant Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) with her to Villa Santa where she’ll meet her future husband, the Visconte Leonardo, for the first time. Pampinea is the type of noble who has been stunted and demented by her position in society and Misia is the tragic sort who secretly grieves a lost love while meeting every whim and caprice Pampinea can think of. Licisca (Tanya Reynolds) is a servant with big relatable designs on her freedom and no amount of sisterly friendship with her mistress Philomena (Jessica Plummer) is going to stop her. Licisca is the closest the ensemble show comes to having a protagonist and Reynolds (who I knew only from Sex Education) imbues her with a relatable grit that’s enjoyable to watch. There’s also the hypochondriac doofus noble Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) who’s brought his “doctor” Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel) to tend to his many arcane medical needs while he plays out a sort of incel bachelor fantasy. Dioneo is a hunky lothario whose various flirtations are often thwarted by Tindaro’s childish needs. Also in attendance are the suave Panfilo (Karan Gill) and his deeply religious wife Neifile (Lou Gala) whose chaste marriage belies a heartfelt and lovely relationship. Rounding out the cast are Stratilia (Leila Farzad) and Sirisco (Tony Hale), the last remaining servants at Villa Santa after the Plague broke out. They both work to maintain cover for a few secrets that, when inevitably unearthed, shake up the dynamics in explosive ways.

It’s all watchable, entertaining, and enjoyable. The strange choice to adapt a framing device is defrayed by the great performances of a committed cast and a certain droll kookiness. If this series were on a weekly release schedule, I could see The Decameron as a perfectly fun and fizzy summer experience. However, the series was dumped all at once for binge-watching and this series does not benefit from that. Watched back to back, the farcical hijinks become repetitive and feel more shallow like we’re watching pratfalls for their own sake. For most of the series, the stakes of the plot stay relatively low so the sudden heightening in the last few episodes to build to an explosive climax feels pretty jarring. The ending itself is quite elliptical and while that’s not a problem in itself, it makes the plot feel a bit inert. There are interesting themes in play like classism, freedom, religious devotion, and sexuality, but the lighthearted tone elides them for the most part. With a weekly release, maybe The Decameron would’ve left a bigger impression.