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It seems that the time has not yet come to relive the Covid-19 pandemic in comedy mode: If you're going to confine a cross-section of an entire society to the countryside to exacerbate conflicts and desires, you might as well go back in time.
Kathleen Jordan, an American creator of series that have never been released in France, has taken The Decameron and stripped the work by Boccaccio (1313-1375), comprising a hundred stories, to keep only the place, a villa on the outskirts of Florence; the time, that of the Black Death, which wiped out almost half of Europe's population in the mid-14th century; and the names of a few protagonists.
Borrowing from the new conventions of historical comedy, which allow the irruption of contemporary language into dialogues and the crossing of references between the past and the present – the most striking recent example remains Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite (2019) – this Decameron is driven by a sensual and bitter verve. The choreography that governs the movements of hearts and bodies would be a danse macabre without the vital energy communicated by the performers, served by precise writing that hints at the tragedy beneath the picaresque.
Within the walls of Villa Santa, whose master remains invisible, a handful of young people from good families and their domestic servants gather. Promised to the owner, whom she has never met, Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) intends to escape her status as a "shriveled-up old maid" of 28. Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), Pampinea's next-in-command, has lost her companion in the epidemic and turns all her affection on her mistress, who hardly deserves it. Less respectful of the established order, Licisca (Tanya Reynolds) has gotten rid of her mistress, Filomena, and pretends to be her. There's also a big spoiled brat, Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin), who is looked after by a doctor, Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), whose uselessness has been proven by the plague; Neifile (Lou Gala), a devout young bride devoured by desire; and the estate's over-anxious steward, Sirisco (Tony Hale), to whose care the whole company is entrusted.
Mamet, Jackson, and Hale have respectively contributed to the success of some of the best comedy series of the century: Girls, Derry Girls, and Veep. In the Tuscan light, dressed in brocades, handling dialogue that swings back and forth between Renaissance turns of phrase – from Shakespeare, since the series was filmed in English – and contemporary repartee, they and the entire cast take obvious and contagious pleasure in bringing to life characters who all gain unexpected dimensions, right down to the rector played by Fares Fares, who comes to remind us of the barbarity outside.
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