Netflix’s ‘Decameron’ Speaks to COVID Strangeness

Though time doesn’t erase the tragedy—the funerals held over Zoom are unbearably heartbreaking in retrospect—it does tamp down sensitivity. I am certainly not eager to relive that time, but reflecting upon it with humor turns out to be more palatable than I expected, as the recent Netflix series The Decameron proves.

Created by Kathleen Jordan, whose previous work includes the breezy Teenage Bounty Hunters, and co-produced by Orange Is the New Black’s Jenji Kohan, this new eight-part farce—starring Tony Hale, Zosia Mamet, and my new favorite comedienne, Tanya Reynolds—squeezes mirth and, when you least expect it, humanism from a dire catastrophe outside of human control (though arguably made worse by human foibles). The source material, written in reaction to the first wave of bubonic plague in the 1340s, has been plundered time and again over the years. If there’s one thing this newest iteration has over the other adaptations, it’s that its worldwide audience is certainly bound to get it.

The Decameron, both Giovanni Boccaccio’s book (first translated from Italian into English in 1620 and downloadable to your Kindle for a whopping $0.00) and the show, concerns itself with a group of Florentines who flee the city during the worst of “the pestilence” and head to a countryside villa to wait it out. And as one who sealed himself in his Queens apartment during the thick of it in 2020, did I have opinions of people with the means to pull a similar move! This is an example of needing four-and-a-half years of distance before tuning in for a plague-set romp.

The set-up is just about the only similarity between these two works, though. In the book, the urban exodus is simply the prologue. The meat of the work comes when the 10 characters amuse one another by telling 10 stories a day over 10 days. (Perhaps you now see from whence the title comes.) The new show, however, takes just the decampment, reimagines the characters, and creates a new storyline. If you’ll allow me a minor spoiler, it’s only at the conclusion, basically as a mint on the pillow to those in the know, that the show nods to what people have expected from The Decameron for centuries—our surviving characters, at the very end of their travails, find themselves with time on their hands, and start spinning naughty yarns as the credits roll.

This is a funny contrast to what has likely been the most widely seen adaptation of The Decameron until now—Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1971 film Il Decameron, which debuted at that year’s Berlin Film Festival, winning the second place Silver Bear prize, and becoming a major box office success in Europe. The movie ditched the framing device entirely, diving right into Boccaccio’s tall tales, many of which, scholars have sussed out, were plucked from other sources and reskinned for the spirit of the times.

Pasolini is a fascinating filmmaker, poet, and polemicist who maintains substantial art house cred among cinephiles, with his titles found in the Criterion Collection and in frequent rotation at repertory theaters. His early work was as a screenwriter (he co-wrote Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita), then he broke out as a director in 1962 with the Anna Magnani-led Mamma Roma, concerning an Italian prostitute struggling to create a better life for her son. He followed this up with the revolutionary The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), which told the story of the life of Christ with a documentary-like feel and anachronistic music. (Most striking was the deployment of Odetta, whose voice was inexorably tied to the Civil Rights movement, and her version of the African American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”) His final film, Salò, or the 100 Days of Sodom (1975), based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade and updated for the Mussolini era, remains one of the most controversial works in 20th century cinema, and something of a test-your-strength challenge for cinephiles, filled with repulsive acts of violence and sexual humiliation (but also some top notch Italian futurist production design). Shortly after it was filmed, the 53-year old director was found brutally murdered, a case still not quite resolved.

But between the captivating Gospel and the grotesque Salò came Il Decameron, and if it were the only one of his works you saw you might be surprised he was ever taken so seriously as an artist. It is a stream-of-consciousness collection of 10 of the 100 Decameron stories (plus some snippets)—the ones most packed with scatalogical gross-outs, erection gags, lusty nuns, dopey cuckolds, and an inordinate amount of mugging faces and bad teeth. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to watch—but so is Kentucky Fried Movie, the raunchy collection of sketches from the artistes who later made Airplane!

Despite the fact that Pasolini skipped the framing device, he followed up Il Decameron’s success by adapting another old tome with a similar gimmick, The Canterbury Tales. (It is believed that Geoffrey Chaucer read Boccaccio’s book when he visited Italy in 1373 and borrowed some of the ribald plot points.) Pasolini rounded out this trilogy with the granddaddy (or grandmommy) of them all, Arabian Nights, the author-less collection of fables from which both Boccaccio and Chaucer yanked ideas.

Pasolini was certainly not the first major artist to adapt The Decameron. William Shakespeare plundered some of the stories twice, first when crafting All’s Well That Ends Well then again for a plot line in Cymbaline. Molière, Thomas Middleton, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson did the same, as did the librettist for the opera Griselda, taking the last of The Decameron’s 100 tales. It was later set to music by Scarlatti, then Vivaldi as well as others. More recently, Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, John C. Reilly, and Fred Armisen starred in The Little Hours, which took the aforementioned story of the lusty nuns (who take sexual advantage of their gardener, posing as a deaf-mute) as inspiration. I’m sure if you poked around long enough you’d find episodes of Looney Tunes that have elements of The Decameron stories in their DNA. Well, at least some of the PG-rated ones.

By some estimates, 50 percent of the European population perished during the Black Death. Not every character of The Decameron makes it to the last episode. From left: Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin), Stratilia (Leila Farzad), and Sirisco (Tony Hale) graveside.Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix

Which is why the Netflix series is, in a way, even more fun. What captures the essence of The Decameron more than coming up with new, randy tales? The tone of the project is what I find most unique. It opens with pitch black humor—a citizenry unfazed by sick people dropping dead in the street. (Think of Monty Python’s “bring out your dead!”) There’s also a bit of razzing 14th century curatives, like shoving flowers up your nose, rubbing yourself with onions, or a belief that special amulets will chase the impure air back to hell. One can’t help but think about the podcaster Joe Rogan taking a  when he had COVID, or the 45th president of the United States wondering if injecting disinfectant or “very powerful light” could save the day.

If the show could be said to have a lead character, it is Tanya Reynolds’s Licisca, handmaiden (and, we’ll later discover, secret sister) to Jessica Plummer’s Filomena. Also in the mix are Douggie McMeekin as Tindaro, a wealthy but cowardly doofus; Amar Chadha-Patel as his hunky personal physician, Dioneo (who maybe is a quack? Hard to tell); Zosia Mamet as Pampinea, the medieval Italian version of a whiny, conniving Karen; Saoirse-Monica Jackson as her Mr. Smithers-esque servant, Misia; Lou Gala as the kind but extremely sexually repressed pious Catholic Neifile; Karan Gill as Panfilo, her well-meaning husband who does indeed care for Neifile, but is also gay. Plus Tony Hale and Leila Farzad play servants at the estate, hiding the fact that its owner, Leonardo, has died of the plague.

The style of the comedy is difficult to pin down. It is very joke-heavy, with rapid fire patter and visual gags crammed into every scene. The performances are broad, from the school of The Office and Parks and Recreation, but without asides to the camera that break the realism. The filmmaking itself does that, with anachronistic music like DEVO, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Yes, The Zombies, and more crashing on the soundtrack at key moments, oftentimes leading to wacky montages, drunkenness, and prurience. Of course, the non-anachronistic music, composed by Ruth Barrett riffing on Antonio Vivaldi is, in fact, quite anachronistic itself. Vivaldi composed in the early 18th century, but his work still has a whiff of “old and Italian,” which is good enough.

Pampinea (Zosia Mamet, left, with Saoirse-Monica Jackson as Misia) proving that Karens existed in 14th-century Florence.Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix

There’s also the mishmash of casting. Zosia Mamet retains her American accent well over a century before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, because her character is the essence of an “ugly American.” Lou Gala retains her French accent because she eventually transforms into a sexpot and, well, the French accent certainly doesn’t hurt. There is a racial array of characters throughout the piece (including characters who only appear in one episode) because why the hell not? Boccaccio’s book is often praised as a primary resource for details of life in 14th century Italy. This is clearly not that.

The number one highlight of this whole enterprise for me is watching the new-to-me Tanya Reynolds flail around in this scheming madhouse. I cannot in any way oversell her remarkable ability at creating non-verbal reactions, contorting her face into seemingly limitless configurations for maximum comedy impact. The Decameron reminded me quite a bit of the period-set BBC comedy Blackadder, which was my first introduction to the genius that is Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean). I expect a career as notable for Reynolds.

Florentine aristocrats amuse themselves with games and strong drink during the bubonic plague in The Decameron.Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix

The other delight is how the series begins with a nasty edge but, by its end, develops a degree of warmth as our infighting group of scoundrels actually starts to care for one another. Indeed, there is a moment toward the end where they (and the show) drop their hard edge toward the pandemic and grieve for lost loved ones.

In that way, Netflix mirrors Boccaccio, as one of the early rules among the storytellers is to not tell tales about Florence. An interpretation of this is that the purpose of The Decameron, both for the characters and the readers, was to find a way to avoid thinking about the plague. However, as the days go on, more sad stories creep in about doomed lovers alongside bawdy narratives of wives tricking husbands and embarrassing buffoonery—just like watching this had me thinking about my old apartment and those ambulance sirens for the first time in a long time. Perhaps this Decameron is a truer adaptation than it lets on.