Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1353) is a classic plague book. It follows ten noble people quarantining together in a beautiful villa in the Italian countryside. They have fled Florence where in 1348, when the story is set, a deadly Black Death outbreak is raging.
While the sick are abandoned and the lower classes suffer, this group feast, play, laugh, sing and dance, entertaining each other with stories – 100 stories, to be exact. It’s a tale that became painfully familiar in the COVID era – in fact, sales of The Decameron soared by 288% during our own lockdowns. This renewed relevance and increase in interest made it ripe for adaptation and Netflix have just released a dark and soapy comedy that is loosely inspired by Boccaccio’s masterpiece.
This re-imagining is powered by love, desire, death and infatuation as Firenze’s most prominent families enter the villa. In 1348, it seems God has abandoned humanity and pestilence is punishment. As bodies are piled in the streets, strewn across fields and tipped into rivers, the poor are stealing boots off cadavers while bandits and brigands plunder.
The rich, however, can retreat from the collapse of society – lucky them. In a house where the quarantine rules are to eat, drink wine and have no talk of the pestilence, it’s not long until the frolicking in sumptuous, silk and satin-clad bedchambers begins. However, as Netflix puts it : “What starts as a wine-soaked sex romp descends into a race for survival.
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