The thumbnail image for The Decameron on the Netflix app depicts a naked man charging toward a lake, his backside demurely pixelated out. The image jibes with the streamer’s description of the comedy series as “a wine-soaked sex romp in the Italian countryside.” But the scene pictured is actually the only bit of nudity in The Decameron, which fails to deliver anything remotely steamy, scandalous, or even satirically sexy.
Inspired by 14th-century Italian author’s Giovanni Boccaccio’s short story collection of the same name, The Decameron revolves around a group of Italian nobles who retreat to a Tuscan villa to wait out the horrors of the bubonic plague. Some of them bring servants, all of them bring secrets, and pretty soon their countryside retreat is rife with lies, schemes, and illicit love affairs.
Pampinea (Zosia Mamet), for one, arrives with the explicit intention of laying claim to the luxurious villa by marrying its owner, and she isn’t going to let anything get in the way—not even the discovery that the man in question has been dead for weeks. Another noblewoman, Filomena (Jessica Plummer), hopes to find a husband during the hillside getaway, though her plans go awry when her servant, Licisca (Tanya Reynolds), pushes her off a bridge and steals her identity. Meanwhile, the villa’s staff workers, Sirisco (Tony Hale) and Stratilia (Leila Farzad), desperately try to prevent the guests from finding out about their master’s demise.
While it was shot partially on the grounds of an Italian castle, the series never seems like it’s trying to conjure a sense of historical reality. It’s all decidedly farcical, with the cast largely using their own accents and speaking mostly in modern-day English, dressed up with the odd piece of more antiquated phrasing. The sight of the brightly costumed characters pratfalling around and making old-timey poop jokes calls to mind a pantomime or a third-rate British sitcom.
The Decameron shows signs of real humanity in one storyline. A married couple, Neifile (Lou Gala) and Panfilo (Karan Gil), first appear to be another pair of one-joke characters: He’s obsessed with food while she’s forever dropping to her knees in holy reverence, accompanied by the sounds of a church choir (a gag that very much doesn’t get funnier with repetition). It turns out that he’s gay and her anxious religiosity hides a raging libido, but their love for each other is real, and Gala and Gill give surprisingly delicate, sensitive performances.
Much of the rest of the cast labors under the illusion that a loud line delivery is a good one. Douggie McMeekin, playing whining man-child Tindaro, gives an oafish performance that could best be described as James Corden-esque. Amar Chadha-Patel does a better job as Tindaro’s right-hand man, Dioneo, with a debonair deadpan that cries out for better punchlines. When he’s not enduring Tindaro’s complaints, Dioneo spends his time wooing the women of the villa, but no matter how long the camera gawks at his long, flowing hair and chiseled abs, The Decameron never manages to conjure even the slightest hint of eroticism from these scenes.
The series is clearly going for something more comedic than the bodice-ripping raunch of Bridgerton, but it’s all too tame to function as a rowdy sex comedy or serve as a satirical send up of the upper classes and their orgiastic excesses. Even after the characters start banging across their strict 14th-century class divides, it doesn’t seem to have much of substance to say.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
