Netflix’s ‘The Decameron’: An Eat The Rich Satire

Image; John William Waterhouse (1849–1917)

Spoilers for Netflix’s The Decameron

The Decameron is an old collection of stories dating back to the 1300s. Written by Giovanni Boccaccio in Medieval Italy, it follows a tale-within-a-tale structure similar to texts like One Thousand and One Nights. Ten young nobles hiding out in a villa in the countryside from the plague in Florence tell each other stories — many based on pre-existing folklore and myths — to pass the time.

The Decameron, published in a more accessible Tuscan vernacular opposed to Latin, was well-received by the public for its cutting and lewd commentary on everything from female sexuality to the clergy. The latter topic was not appreciated by the Vatican, which attempted to ban this text in the ensuing centuries.

And so showrunner Kathleen Jordan is drawing from this rich history in her loose adaptation, also titled The Decameron. She tells an equally lewd dark comedy that cuts the tale-within-a-tale structure to focus solely on the drama of the nobles and servants at the Villa.

In doing so, she inverts the upstairs-downstairs dynamic seen in shows such as Downton Abbey (2010–2015) and instead brings these two classes directly into conflict.

They all fall down

The show’s setting is similar to its written counterpart. The Black Death has swept through the city of Florence, where our leads are from, and they have fled to the Villa Santa to escape it. The plague has acted as a great leveler (killing nobles and common folk alike), which means that the “normal” social order is on the brink of collapse — at least temporarily.

When our leads travel to Villa Santa, the nobles do not bring an entourage of staff and family members because most have died.

Instead, they opt to mostly travel in noble-servant pairs. Each pair represents something illuminating about class dynamics: mainly how to bridge the class divide, how to ignore it, and what happens when resentments boil over too high.

For the noble Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) and his doctor Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), their relationship is literally toxic. Tindaro is an annoying pedantic blowhard who bloviates about the Roman Empire and the duplicitousness of women. He is also a hypochondriac. So, to keep the gold flowing and Tindaro manageable, Dioneo, who I would charitably call a f@ckboy, poisons Tindaro in a Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP) kind of situation.

As the social order in the Villa breaks down, however, Dioneo increasingly does not care about even the pretense of tending to his master. When a new faction takes over the Villa and offers Dioneo the right to stay (but not his master, Tindaro), he gladly takes it. Dioneo had no emotional investment in Tindaro, and the moment their financial investment dissolves, they have nothing.

While Tindaro outlasts Dioneo (more out of coincidence than anything else), he doesn’t survive the series. He ultimately sacrifices himself for the peasants of the Villa, particularly so his “love interest,” Stratilia (Leila Farzad), and her child (Aston Wray) can survive an impending invasion.

Whereas in a different text, such a sacrifice would earn Tindaro confessions of love and admiration from Stratilia, she offers no such genuine confessions, taking his money, offering false praises, and fleeing the Villa.

A similar fate befalls noble Panfilo (Karan Gill), who decides to end his life after his wife, Neifile (Lou Gala), succumbs to the plague. I appreciated Panfilo’s relationship with his wife, which deserves an article in its own right, but for our purposes, it should be noted that he is yet another noble who dies in the text. He tenderly holds his wife’s body as a shield against the invaders, telling his enemies it has the plague, and that gives everyone else enough time to flee.

Never letting go

Now, a fallen noble who doesn’t get a hero’s death is the spoiled Pampinea (Zosia Mamet), who came to Villa Santa hoping to secure a marriage from the late Visconte Leonardo. Her relationship with her servant Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) ends in delicious tragedy as the latter comes to terms with just how cruel Pampinea is.

At first, Misia cares deeply for her master, professing her devotion to her.

Yet Pampinea is a conniving, mentally abusive person who shows utter disregard for Misia. She pushes her servant to do utterly irreprehensible things, such as killing a fellow noble so Pampinea can maintain the illusion of control over the Villa. Misia’s feelings don’t matter to Pampinea, and she makes it quite clear that she will never release Misia from this toxic cycle, saying:

“The way you love me, you love me no matter what I do. It's the greatest gift I've ever known…I will never let you go.”

Shortly after this statement, Misia does the only thing a person backed into a corner by someone with an unequal power dynamic can truly do: she kills Pampinea. Specifically, she traps Pampinea in a barrel and lights it on fire.

From my perspective, Pampinea’s death reads as justice, representing what the outcome is for the upper classes when resentment is never given room to breathe.

Letting go

The only noble protagonist who survives the series is Filomena (Jessica Plummer), alongside her servant Licisca (Tanya Reynolds). This is mainly because Filomena can set her privilege aside.

When we first see Filomena on her way to Villa Santa, we observe an extraordinarily cruel person — so cruel, in fact, that she is unwilling to let her servant Licisca give some bread to a dying man. Filomena and Licisca start to fight physically. Licisca loses it, pushing Filomena off a bridge in, if not an act of self-defense, at the very least, something most viewers can identify with.

Many of us have wanted to push our abusive bosses off a bridge.

This inciting incident allows Licisca to go to the Villa pretending to be Filomena, literally inverting the class dynamics of this pairing. Licisca, playing Filomena, comes to realize how arbitrary the social rules governing the classes are, lamenting: “Why can’t we [live freely]? Men do. They get on just fine behaving like animals.”

The “real” Filomena inevitably makes her way to the Villa, haggard and bruised from her long travels. However, she is not perceived as a noblewoman by the people of the Villa but as a servant. Filomena is forced to pretend to be Licisca — to take on the role she so callously abused when her position was reversed.

There is one funny scene where Filomena pleads to Pampinea to accept her. “I spoke the truth,” she begs. “I was not a servant until the day I arrived at Villa Santa…So I ask you, as a friend and a fellow noblewoman, to help me break Licisca’s spell.” Pampinea ignores her pleas because she feels awkward about the situation.

It’s not important to her whether Filomena is actually a servant or a noble— merely that someone is playing the role.

Filomena learns to set her ego aside, albeit under the constant threat of death. She opens up to Licisca until there are no secrets between them, leading to reconciliation. It takes a lot to reach that point, and Filomena has to lose everything to do so, but she does get there.

Happily ever after-ish

The Decameron is a show about peasants and nobles clashing during the breakdown of this medieval society’s social order.

One by one, most of our noble leads die, and the one who remains learns to be a little less rigid in her thinking. The series ends with Filomena and the other servants sitting in a glade, happily entertaining each other with stories and fake food, replicating the original Decameron, sans the nobles. There is no hierarchy left between them — at least in that moment.

This story of plague, class differences, and debauchery ends on a very hopeful note — one I found refreshing in our uncertain world, with class dynamics only slightly removed from our medieval ancestors of yore.