When I heard that Netflix was producing a version of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece, the Decameron, I was thrilled. The book, which famously uses the 1348 Black Death as the backdrop, features a group of ten noble Florentines who decide that they are too young, beautiful and rich to suffer in the chaotic, plague-infested city and escape to the more serene countryside. Ensconced in their villa, they pass the time by strolling the grounds, playing music, napping and eating delicious food. (Sign me up.) Finding they still had hours of daylight left to fill, the group decides to tell stories and the 100 tales that follow are entertaining, sensuous, tragic and hilarious.
It is easy to see why the show’s creator, Kathleen Jordan, would be drawn to the Decameron, particularly as we navigate our own pandemic and its aftermath. The themes that Boccaccio’s tales explore—love, class tensions, death, societal changes, religion, sex, marriage, morality and misfortune—are ones that still occupy much of our discourse today. The frame and the short stories are rife with on-screen possibilities that appeal to a 21st-century audience. While the show does include a number of these themes, it is not an adaptation of the Decameron as a whole. Rather, it is very loosely based on the original frame with some elements from the stories making appearances throughout.
Having escaped the plague-ridden city, the show features a group of five nobles and five servants who assemble at a country villa. Here the real drama begins as the protagonists get to know each other while simultaneously combatting the plague, mercenary soldiers, bands of brigands and often each other. (There is some sex in there, too, but much less than the book offers.) With its modern music and contemporary dialogue, the show presents an anachronistic historical mashup—shades of Bridgerton, Monty Python, Love Island and White Lotus galore—that bears little to no resemblance to the structure of Boccaccio’s masterpiece.
Case in point. There are no stories—or very few of them, anyway. In the third episode, the mean but kooky Pampinea celebrates her sham wedding with festivities that include a storytelling competition. The finale cleverly weaves the stories back into the plot with the surviving members of the group sitting in a glade while one of their number regales the others with the tale of Griselda, the final story in Boccaccio’s original.
Once I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t really watching an adaptation of the Decameron, but a show that was lightly inspired by it, I was able to relax and enjoy, as well noting that several of the scenarios and themes from the book had made their way into the plot of the TV series.
The Author’s Introduction to the Decameron offers one of the most horrifying accounts of the Black Death in Italian literature, detailing the effects on the bodies of infected humans and animals, as well as what happens to the psyche of the survivors. It is absolutely nauseating. The opening minutes of the series, including the title credits which make amazing graphic use of black rats, are equally revolting. There is excrement in handkerchiefs and rotting bodies covered with plague boils. While the book’s stories do not focus on the plague, the show is dominated by the suffering and fear that it produced in the protagonists.
The class differences that take center stage from the very beginning of the series are also present in Boccaccio’s stories. Role reversals, socially inappropriate sexual relationships and identity swaps play out in the stories and in the TV show. Boccaccio’s anti-clericalism and myriad religious themes (fake miracles, fake relics) are also present in the show, especially in the character of Neifile, who is as devout as she is (guiltily) horny. There is a great moment when All You Think About is Sex by Sparks plays during a montage of Neifile’s day.
There are many Boccaccian examples of quick wit and characters thinking on their feet to turn a bad situation into a good one, and another popular Boccaccio trope—that of dimwitted nobles and intellectuals being taken advantage of by cunning members of the lower classes—is alive and well in the character of Tindaro. Farcical situations featuring people stuffed in barrels also come straight from Boccaccio (one has only to think of Peronella from Day Seven), as does the rampant misogyny.
For all of the references that the show gets right, the one they have got horribly wrong is the portrayal of Boccaccio’s memorable character, Calandrino, a bumbling but fabulously arrogant Florentine simpleton who is the butt of the book’s most spectacular practical jokes. In the show, Calandrino is reduced to a lazy and stupid farmhand with no lines and no real personality.
Purists (and most Italians) will likely hate it from beginning to end, but I think the show offers a great opportunity to entice people to read the Decameron, where they will see that, as usual, the original text is far superior to any television adaptation.
Alexandra Lawrence and The British Institute of Florence are teaming up to bring you a six-week guide reading of the Decameron. The series runs from October 1 to November 5, and is both online and in person at the library. Find out more.
