Black comedy miniseries The Decameron lands on Netflix on Thursday, July 25 Zosia Mamet as Pampinea and Saoirse-Monica Jackson as Misia in The Decameron. Photo: Netflix A scene from The Decameron, Netflix's new ensemble comedy (Photo: Netflix) If you took assorted pieces of Blackadder, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and peak-period Mel Brooks at his most gloriously iconoclastic and fed them into a mincing machine, what came out the other end would probably look a lot like black comedy miniseries The Decameron (Netflix, all episodes available Thursday, July 25) — although with those ingredients, you’d hope it would be a bit better than it is. The Decameron – loosely “inspired by” Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century book about 10 people sheltering in a villa from the Black Death who pass the time by telling one another stories — is a sweary, knockabout romp full of slapstick, farce, sexual shenanigans, broad satire about class and religion, and even broader performances.
The Decameron | Official Trailer It’s all so exaggeratedly and cartoonishly bawdy that if you took away the Netflix-sized budget and the ravishing, beautifully shot setting, you could just as easily be watching something called Carry On Black Death. The irreverent tone is struck in the opening scene. In Florence in 1348, a raven lands on a window ledge and is hit by a well-aimed stone thrown by a young boy in the street below.
“Food!” he shouts as he picks up the dead bird, and then calls out.