Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The Decameron, Netflix’s latest period series, arrives on our screens already feeling dated. Not because it’s loosely based on a text that’s almost 700 years old — the opus by the Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio — or even because Pasolini already went there, but because this story of an exclusive set wining and dining as a plague rages would have felt a lot more timely a few years ago. A black comedy about the Black Death, this eight-parter follows a coterie of aristocrats and their long-suffering attendants as they flee pestilence-ridden Florence for a country villa owned by a mysterious and absent viscount. But where Boccaccio used this as a framing device for a collection of short tales exchanged over 10 nights, the show eschews the anthology format and focuses instead on the guests themselves — and lies, lust and violence that sweep through their bucolic retreat. If the opulent setting and odious elites brings to mind The White Lotus, the mood here is decidedly more bawdy farce than trenchant class satire. Essentially a 1970s-style camp British sex caper on a lavish Netflix budget, it is full of exaggerated, clashing personalities and mistaken identities; furtive erotic awakenings and brazen idiocy; arch dialogue and physical comedy — and terracotta pots full of bodily fluids.While it teeters on the brink of inanity, the series is partially redeemed by the cast’s commitment to hamming it up as required. Leading the ensemble are Zosia Mamet as Pampinea — “a shrivelled-up 28-year-old” whose childish tantrums test the patience of harried servants Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) and Sirisco (the great Tony Hale) — and Tanya Reynolds as Liscisca, a long-suffering handmaiden who tries to supplant her own mistress (Jessica Plummer). Also roaming around the grounds are the asinine heir Tindaro (Dougie McMeekin), a 14th-century incel, and Neifile (Lou Gala), a voluntarily celibate Christian whose chastity is tested by every man she interacts with other than her husband (Karan Gill).Yet the running gags wear thin, and these 50-60 minute episodes take too long to set up both plots and punchlines. And though it takes an enjoyably tongue-in-cheek approach to sex and death, the show rarely shows real intelligence or signs of its literary origins. But in 2024 as much as 1348, a bit of entertainment can provide refuge from an overwhelming world.★★★☆☆On Netflix now
