Warning – spoilers ahead!
BY GINA BEVAN, IMAGE BY NETFLIX
Netflix’s new, and very queer, comedy, The Decameron, is currently streaming. The TV show set in 1348 Italy and during the Black Death is (loosely!) based on the series of tales by Giovanni Boccaccio (completed in 1353). The show follows a group of spoilt nobles and their servants escaping plague-riddled Florence to holiday together in the Tuscan countryside, leaving worries of the pestilence and dying bodies behind to indulge.
The show is a complete soap opera, with each person wrapped up in their own personal dramas and almost oblivious to the impending doom of the Black Death. Whether it’s fake pregnancies, lusting over the attractive doctor (played by Amar Chadha-Patel who you may recognise from Willow), or murder, each outrageous storyline descends the group into further chaos. It’s a quarantine that’s gone very, very wrong, but is so much fun to watch.
While the nobles, who are all a bunch of incompetent childish idiots, live it up with their fancy feasts, their servants bend over backwards to fulfil their every demand. The divide between the two classes is repeatedly described in the series as natural and a servant pretending to be a noble or vice versa is described as going against God, though there are many in the show that break the rules! While arguments of god and nature have been used to attack homosexuality, there are several queer relationships that hardly anyone bats an eye to in this 14th-century version of Italy (even Boccaccio included queer characters in his original).
The nobleman Panfilo (Karan Gill) is in a sexless marriage to his pious wife and has had several affairs including with the handsome messenger Andreoli. The love between him and his wife, while it may be platonic, is still celebrated in the show alongside all other different manifestations of love and sexuality. The sweetest relationship is between Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson of Derry Girls) and Filomena (Jessica Plummer). When the distinction between nobles and servants breaks down due to the internal drama within the villa, it is Filomena who urges Misia to leave her toxic and eccentric mistress Pampinea (Zosia Mamet). In episode seven, there’s a pretty intense sex scene between the two to Just Like Honey by Jesus And The Mary Chain (in fact, there’s tons of great indie music throughout), only for the camera to pan to Misia’s mistress looking on while hiding from the others in the house – Misia can’t escape!
The Decameron is a brilliant show that has so many twists that I raced my way through the eight episodes.
I won’t ruin the ending, but just know it’s a happy one for Misia and Filomena – phew!
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