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.
