Of Derry Girls and Florence Boys
Marathoned Derry Girls, season 2, which was as delightful as season 1 had been (and since the episodes are half an hour and they‘re only six of them, it was easy to do). Mind you, for all that it‘s a comedy show, I never had the impression it glorified or made harmless what is going on in the setting - early 1990s Ireland - and it comes up in a lot of casual ways. (Such as Erin‘s rant that the Take That concert in Belfast will probably the last time for a long while a famous pop group comes near them „because we‘re fucking killing each other all the time“.) Otoh the irreverent black humor of course is also aimed at the Catholic/Protestant divide, and Michelle first seeing the Protestant boys as an opportunity to make out and then being foiled by the one she picked turning out to be a purity bracelet wearer cracked me up to no end .
Due to rl threats and circumstances, there‘s a great meta poignancy to the season‘s later half, as the peace process gets going, and then Clinton visits Derry in the finale. You know, in the time when the British government was actually invested in less bloodshed in Ireland, the US President was someone whose visit was looked forward to in a „troubled“ (to put it mildly) part of the UK, and he used his speeches to urge reconciliation and peace. (It didn‘t escape me that the very last scene of the season, the clip from Clinton‘s speech in Derry on tv, is followed by credits in absolute silence, unlike all the other episodes of the season which have songs fitting the ep running with the credits.)
But comedy - like most fiction - stands and falls whether you get invested in the characters beyond laughing, and by now, I most certainly am. And went awww at the big group hug in the finale (and the entire sequence leading up to it).
Another second season I marathoned in recent weeks was that of the Italian/British show I Medici. First season was Medici: Masters of Florence and covered Cosimo (il Veccio, in his not-so-old days), his wife Contessina, the Medici rise to the very top of Florence and the feud with the Albizzi. Season 2 is the first of two covering Lorenzo il Magnifico, is called Medici: The Magnificent and of course ends with the Pazzi Conspiracy and the big, bloody climax of same in the Duomo. (Incidentally, I figured as much when I heard there would be two Lorenzo seasons. You really can‘t top the Pazzi Conspiracy for finale drama, as Da Vinci‘s Demons also figured when making it its season 1 finale.) Now, I was looking forward to this for three reasons: I had liked the first season (without outright loving it, though I did love Contessina, who was my favourite s1 character), I‘m still waiting for a really good screen portrayal of Lorenzo de‘ Medici, who is one of the most interesting characters of the Renaissance, and Bradley James, whom I’m fond of due to his playing Arthur in Merlin, plays Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano. (This struck me as excellent casting the moment I heard of it.) Now that I‘ve watched it: Daniel Sharman isn‘t my platonic ideal of screen Lorenzo, either (not just because he‘s too good looking), but he does well with what the scripts give him (and becomes outstanding in the finale). Bradley James is indeed excellent as Guiliano. As in the first season, the second uses a lot of rl historical twists and turns with a lot of fictionalization. Was amused that Girolamo Riario, who became a main character on Da Vinci‘s Demons and whose historical counterpart was an important conspiracy member, here is a blink and you‘ve missed him guy (he shows briefly early in the season when getting married to Caterina Sforza (then a child bride of 12, but I‘m glad they had her in the one scene, because Caterina Sforza), and then again in the last but one episode), while Francesco de’ Pazzi gets the spot of tragic antagonist with intense (and somewhat homoerotic) relationship with hero. Sadly, Contessina is only present in a few flashbacks, but her now played by Sarah Parish daughter-in-law Lucrezia has matured into a splendid matriarch and power player in her own right. (Which, btw is historical canon as well. She also was a poet; Lorenzo clearly inherited a lot from her.) (Whose first name isn‘t mentioned in dialogue, though, presumably so there is no confusion because of Lorenzo‘s mistress Lucrezia Donati.) Other female characters of note: Lorenzo’s later wife, Clarice Orsini, said Lucrezia Donati, Simonetta Vespucci and Bianca de’ Medici - Lorenzo’s other sisters didn’t make the fictional cut, but I figured the show would keep the one who married a Pazzi, as indeed it did. Now this show does not win the Bechdel test in that these women while having meaningful interactions with each other usually talk about men, and their agenda is focused on men, but they‘re individuals, not just set decoration. I had no clear favourite the way I had in s1.
Speaking of decoration, though: the show makes the most of the beauty of Florence, especially the Duomo, and throws in Tuscany landscapes for good measure. The costumes are equally gorgeous (and worn well by the very pretty cast), and the while the show still didn‘t make it from „like“ to „love“ for me, I can reccommend the eye candy whole heartedly.
If Cosimo‘s arc in s1 took some emotional beats from The Godfather and Michael Corleone, Lorenzo‘s emotional beats echo the Lawrence of Arabia version of T.E. Lawrence: idealism + just that bit of hubris due to being able to pull the proverbial rabbits out of political hats and winning people over + terrible traumatic event + character then loses it and becomes responsible for a lot of death. Both Lorenzo‘s idealism through most of the season and his responsibility for the roaring rampage of revenge that gripped Florence once the tide had turned was exaggareted when compared to history - Lorenzo de‘ Medici certainly had no intention of turning Florence into a „true republic“ pre-Pazzi Conspiracy, and he did try to calm the people down when Florence exploded - , but in terms of the fictional character, it worked. And as I said, young Daniel Sharman sells it - through most of the season, he‘s charming and persuasive enough to make it believable he talks various people into treaties, foes into an alliance based on a brief childhood friendship, and political brides into falling in love with him, while at the same time the very first episode, in which he realises he has to essentially remove his father from leadership if he‘s to save Florence and the Medici power in it and does just that, shows already the idealism doesn‘t mean he‘s not capable of ruthlessness as well if pushed enough. Lorenzo‘s other flaw, pre-finale, is not seeing that he hurts people when taking it for granted they‘ll go along with the goal du jour; no, his mistress and wife aren‘t happy to share, yes, Giuliano is hurt when Lorenzo mid season is so invested in Franceso Pazzi, etc. But the season finale is when Sharman really impressed me, both in the big and the small scale.
The final episode starts with the brothers Medici entering the Duomo on Easter Sunday. Sidenote: other than Caesar‘s assassination, I can‘t think of a more theatrical political murder plot, complete with the fortune of the conspirators reversing and them going from surety of victory and power to being hunted down/driven out of the city. And much like Rome managed the often played death of Caesar feel viscerally brutal again to me, here the death of Guiliano and Lorenzo‘s bare survival, both well known historical facts, felt suddenly visceral and devastating again. Though I was briefly taken out of the imersion to reflect on poor Angelo Poliziano‘s lot in fictional life. Dragging Lorenzo to safety into the sacristy was his big hero moment in history, and yet scriptwriters keep giving that action to other people. In Da Vinci‘s Demons, Leonardo gets to do it, in The Medici, it‘s Clarice (who also manages to keep her mother-in-law from running out again). To top the indignity, Poliziano, who gets a scene in the first episode but afterwards is around without dialogue (while Sandro Botticelli is the friend of the Medici brothers who actually gets a personality and storyline), is depicted running from the Duomo in the finale, telling Sandro (who didn‘t attend mass) that both Guiliano and Lorenzo are dead. Now that‘s just slander.
Though that scene in the sacristy is part of what I‘m talking about. Because it contains the big transformative moment, as Lorenzo goes from horrified, devastated by his brother‘s murder (and by whom), afraid for his own life (this episode has that rarity, the main heroic character when he‘s about to be killed allowed to panic and fear of his life instead of acting fearless) and additionally horrified as his equally desparate mother screams at him „you left him (Guiliano)“ and that he should have saved his brother to: stone cold rage and determination. (Along with the continuing devastation about his losing his brother - that never goes away for the remainder of the episode, no matter what else he‘s also doing.) When he leaves the sacristy again, he‘s become the man capable of ordering the deaths of the entire Pazzi family in retaliation.
I mentioned the Lawrence-as-written-by-Robert-Bolt-and-filmed-by-David-Lean echoes; there is also an additional red thread, the question whether, as Guiliano puts it, you can only make it as the first man of Florence if you do as Cosimo did, sometimes be bad in order to do good, or whether you can do good and be good at the same time. The show isn‘t subtle about this, which is why I‘m torn about the Contessina flashbacks: on the one hand, I was glad to see her again, otoh, she‘s basically just there to be Lorenzo‘s conscience, urging him to not just act but be good and end the Medici/Pazzi feud, which through the season he tries to do via reconciliation efforts and in the finale accomplishes by ending the Pazzi. (Other than brother-in-law Gugliemo. Other surviving members of the Pazzi family were edited out of the story.) This, again, works in terms of Lorenzo‘s story but doesn‘t really fit with Contessina in the first season being quite capable of ruthless acts herself. (Though not murder.)
The Pazzi depicted in this version are: Jacobo, played by Sean Bean, who like Dustin Hoffmann as Giovanni de‘ Medici in the first season is the show‘s big „here‘s an internationally known star in our series“ coup and like him gets to be an evil patriarch, sharing the primary antagonist role with his nephew Francesco. While Jacobo is an unambigious villain (whose sole few „human“ moments are when he‘s regarding the miniature of his lost wife he keeps with him all the time), Francesco starts out as a villain, is then revealed via flashbacks to have been a childhood friend of Lorenzo‘s before his uncle indoctrinated him while in the present Lorenzo manages to get him change sides with a mixture of good strategic suggestions and emotional appeals, then is manipulated back to the Pazzi side of the Force by his uncle and ends up as the main killer in the brutal death of Guiliano, finally meeting his historic fate of being hanged from the Palazzo Veccio after one last confrontation with Lorenzo. Unsurprisingly, what there is of Medici fanfiction has taken Francesco to its collective bosom. I have some reservations. Not that I can‘t see Francesco/Lorenzo, I totally can, but I think what I‘ve seen of fanfic too easily blames his crimes totally on Jacobo and ignores that in the episode where he‘s introduced, he has some thugs beat up Guiliano (who earlier hurt Jacobo in an argument) and kicks him when he‘s already lying on the street. Sorry, but that already illustrates a brutally vicious streak which gets vented again after his second heel turn. It doesn’t help that in the episode where his uncle manipulates him back, Francesco five minutes earlier says Jacobo is an arch manipulator and falls for it anyway. The episode tries to do something along the lines of Jago and Othello (flimsy evidence invented or distorted), but that works in a play where the time between Othello deciding on Desdemona‘s death and her murder is relatively short; Francesco turning against his wife Novella (whom Jacobo has convinced him is really Lorenzo‘s spy and patsy), ending his friendship with Lorenzo and ending up as a prime mover in the murder and attempted more of both brothers takes several episodes, i.e. weeks or months of in show chronology, which is why in most performances, I‘m sorry for Othello but find myself more in a „you deserve this“ mode when Francesco meets his maker.
(Especially since the historical gesture of Francesco hugging the brothers before they enter the Duomo (to secretly check whether they‘re wearing body armor under their clothing) due to the reframing of his relationship with Lorenzo gets that extra Judas flavour, and what he does to Guiliano comes without hesitation and is real butchery.)
The third Pazzi depicted in the show is Gugliemo, who is also the most nondescript: he‘s basically there as the young naive lover to match Bianca de’ Medici as the female version of young naive lover. Early in the show, they go through a standard forbidden love tale, then when they get married (and Lorenzo manages to turn this to his advantage in the campaign to lure Francesco to the Medici side of the Force), they disappear into the background, and the one truly interesting and captivating scene they have is in the finale, when Bianca realises that Gugliemo at least knew something was up and very wrong indeed due to a letter Francesco sent him, and can‘t be sure just how much he knew or didn‘t know before her brother got murdered by his brother.
I should add that in general, the dialogue on the show tends to be servicable; you get real clunkers like „what is going on in that brilliant mind of yours?“, but thankfully not that often. The actors manage to elevate it quite a lot, though; a scene like Lucrezia de‘ Medici manipulating Carlo (that would be Cosimo‘s illegiatimate son Maddalena was pregnant with in last season‘s show finale) into urging Clarice Orsini to abondon her plan to become a nun which at first he really doesn‘t want to is made brillliant by Sarah Parish‘s expression and the way she says „but it will require forgiveness“.
Brothers in historical shows usually come in two flavours: more often than not as rivals, occasionally as allies, sometimes as both though not necessarily at the same time. Guiliano is one of the rare staunch supporter brothers (with great chemistry to boot); him going behind Lorenzo‘s back is not even a question. He also falls into the category of quippy partying sibling to his brother‘s working sibling (step forward, brothers played by David Oakes, Juan and Ernst both, as well as Philippe D‘Orleans in any version, oh, and Princess Margaret in „The Crown“), but unlike the other party goes except for the Versailles version of Philippe he ready to work when needed and is rather good at it. He also gets to play truthteller/pessimist to Lorenzo‘s optimist, and since he‘s played by Bradley James, he gets to be shirtless a lot. (The show goes with the „Simonetta Vespucci and Guiliano de‘ Medici were the models for Botticelli‘s Venus and Mars painting. Meaning we see him repeatedly looking like this. The problem with that is that the earliest possible date for that painting is after both their deaths, but then agian, show!Sandro‘s painting is destroyed in the finale, so presumably in the Mediciverse he recreates it at a later point.) Considering that this is - after Arthur in i<>Merlin and Lowell In I, Zombie - the third young man I‘ve seen Bradley James play who dies young and in a violent way to the devastation of the show‘s hero, he‘s starting to feel as sure a sign of doom as Sean Bean to his characters.
Let‘s see, what else: the show goes surprisingly easy on Pope Sixtus. I mean, I didn‘t expect the beyond camp glorious over-the-top-ness of Da Vinci Demons Evil McEvil Pope, but they keep him on the lighter side of morally ambiguous by blaming Salviati for most of the darker deeds, and when he gives his famous statement (that he can‘t condone murder, but you know, Lorenzo is surely a villain and removing him would be a service to the church, but, again, can‘t condone murder), the show just lets him say the first part and Salviati the seocnd. Though the way the aftermath is played does signal Sixtus is aware what he‘s okayed just now. Mind you, at this point the plan is still to kill both brothers at dinner. The sheer blaphemy of killing them on the holiest day of the year, during Easter Sunday mass at the moment of transubstation makes the show‘s version of it being a last minute change of plan (since Guiliano didn‘t show up at the feast and Easter Sunday mass was the sole opportunity where the conspirators knew both Medici brothers would be present, in public, and thus approachable) quite plausible anyway. (If, that is, you assume Sixtus was sincere in his faith, which this show does.)
In conclusion: not stellar, but pushing various of my emotional buttons really well. I‘m awaiting the third serason, which presumably will feature the two years Florence was at war with the Papacy and Lorenzo‘s Neapolitan gamble.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1348950.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Due to rl threats and circumstances, there‘s a great meta poignancy to the season‘s later half, as the peace process gets going, and then Clinton visits Derry in the finale. You know, in the time when the British government was actually invested in less bloodshed in Ireland, the US President was someone whose visit was looked forward to in a „troubled“ (to put it mildly) part of the UK, and he used his speeches to urge reconciliation and peace. (It didn‘t escape me that the very last scene of the season, the clip from Clinton‘s speech in Derry on tv, is followed by credits in absolute silence, unlike all the other episodes of the season which have songs fitting the ep running with the credits.)
But comedy - like most fiction - stands and falls whether you get invested in the characters beyond laughing, and by now, I most certainly am. And went awww at the big group hug in the finale (and the entire sequence leading up to it).
Another second season I marathoned in recent weeks was that of the Italian/British show I Medici. First season was Medici: Masters of Florence and covered Cosimo (il Veccio, in his not-so-old days), his wife Contessina, the Medici rise to the very top of Florence and the feud with the Albizzi. Season 2 is the first of two covering Lorenzo il Magnifico, is called Medici: The Magnificent and of course ends with the Pazzi Conspiracy and the big, bloody climax of same in the Duomo. (Incidentally, I figured as much when I heard there would be two Lorenzo seasons. You really can‘t top the Pazzi Conspiracy for finale drama, as Da Vinci‘s Demons also figured when making it its season 1 finale.) Now, I was looking forward to this for three reasons: I had liked the first season (without outright loving it, though I did love Contessina, who was my favourite s1 character), I‘m still waiting for a really good screen portrayal of Lorenzo de‘ Medici, who is one of the most interesting characters of the Renaissance, and Bradley James, whom I’m fond of due to his playing Arthur in Merlin, plays Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano. (This struck me as excellent casting the moment I heard of it.) Now that I‘ve watched it: Daniel Sharman isn‘t my platonic ideal of screen Lorenzo, either (not just because he‘s too good looking), but he does well with what the scripts give him (and becomes outstanding in the finale). Bradley James is indeed excellent as Guiliano. As in the first season, the second uses a lot of rl historical twists and turns with a lot of fictionalization. Was amused that Girolamo Riario, who became a main character on Da Vinci‘s Demons and whose historical counterpart was an important conspiracy member, here is a blink and you‘ve missed him guy (he shows briefly early in the season when getting married to Caterina Sforza (then a child bride of 12, but I‘m glad they had her in the one scene, because Caterina Sforza), and then again in the last but one episode), while Francesco de’ Pazzi gets the spot of tragic antagonist with intense (and somewhat homoerotic) relationship with hero. Sadly, Contessina is only present in a few flashbacks, but her now played by Sarah Parish daughter-in-law Lucrezia has matured into a splendid matriarch and power player in her own right. (Which, btw is historical canon as well. She also was a poet; Lorenzo clearly inherited a lot from her.) (Whose first name isn‘t mentioned in dialogue, though, presumably so there is no confusion because of Lorenzo‘s mistress Lucrezia Donati.) Other female characters of note: Lorenzo’s later wife, Clarice Orsini, said Lucrezia Donati, Simonetta Vespucci and Bianca de’ Medici - Lorenzo’s other sisters didn’t make the fictional cut, but I figured the show would keep the one who married a Pazzi, as indeed it did. Now this show does not win the Bechdel test in that these women while having meaningful interactions with each other usually talk about men, and their agenda is focused on men, but they‘re individuals, not just set decoration. I had no clear favourite the way I had in s1.
Speaking of decoration, though: the show makes the most of the beauty of Florence, especially the Duomo, and throws in Tuscany landscapes for good measure. The costumes are equally gorgeous (and worn well by the very pretty cast), and the while the show still didn‘t make it from „like“ to „love“ for me, I can reccommend the eye candy whole heartedly.
If Cosimo‘s arc in s1 took some emotional beats from The Godfather and Michael Corleone, Lorenzo‘s emotional beats echo the Lawrence of Arabia version of T.E. Lawrence: idealism + just that bit of hubris due to being able to pull the proverbial rabbits out of political hats and winning people over + terrible traumatic event + character then loses it and becomes responsible for a lot of death. Both Lorenzo‘s idealism through most of the season and his responsibility for the roaring rampage of revenge that gripped Florence once the tide had turned was exaggareted when compared to history - Lorenzo de‘ Medici certainly had no intention of turning Florence into a „true republic“ pre-Pazzi Conspiracy, and he did try to calm the people down when Florence exploded - , but in terms of the fictional character, it worked. And as I said, young Daniel Sharman sells it - through most of the season, he‘s charming and persuasive enough to make it believable he talks various people into treaties, foes into an alliance based on a brief childhood friendship, and political brides into falling in love with him, while at the same time the very first episode, in which he realises he has to essentially remove his father from leadership if he‘s to save Florence and the Medici power in it and does just that, shows already the idealism doesn‘t mean he‘s not capable of ruthlessness as well if pushed enough. Lorenzo‘s other flaw, pre-finale, is not seeing that he hurts people when taking it for granted they‘ll go along with the goal du jour; no, his mistress and wife aren‘t happy to share, yes, Giuliano is hurt when Lorenzo mid season is so invested in Franceso Pazzi, etc. But the season finale is when Sharman really impressed me, both in the big and the small scale.
The final episode starts with the brothers Medici entering the Duomo on Easter Sunday. Sidenote: other than Caesar‘s assassination, I can‘t think of a more theatrical political murder plot, complete with the fortune of the conspirators reversing and them going from surety of victory and power to being hunted down/driven out of the city. And much like Rome managed the often played death of Caesar feel viscerally brutal again to me, here the death of Guiliano and Lorenzo‘s bare survival, both well known historical facts, felt suddenly visceral and devastating again. Though I was briefly taken out of the imersion to reflect on poor Angelo Poliziano‘s lot in fictional life. Dragging Lorenzo to safety into the sacristy was his big hero moment in history, and yet scriptwriters keep giving that action to other people. In Da Vinci‘s Demons, Leonardo gets to do it, in The Medici, it‘s Clarice (who also manages to keep her mother-in-law from running out again). To top the indignity, Poliziano, who gets a scene in the first episode but afterwards is around without dialogue (while Sandro Botticelli is the friend of the Medici brothers who actually gets a personality and storyline), is depicted running from the Duomo in the finale, telling Sandro (who didn‘t attend mass) that both Guiliano and Lorenzo are dead. Now that‘s just slander.
Though that scene in the sacristy is part of what I‘m talking about. Because it contains the big transformative moment, as Lorenzo goes from horrified, devastated by his brother‘s murder (and by whom), afraid for his own life (this episode has that rarity, the main heroic character when he‘s about to be killed allowed to panic and fear of his life instead of acting fearless) and additionally horrified as his equally desparate mother screams at him „you left him (Guiliano)“ and that he should have saved his brother to: stone cold rage and determination. (Along with the continuing devastation about his losing his brother - that never goes away for the remainder of the episode, no matter what else he‘s also doing.) When he leaves the sacristy again, he‘s become the man capable of ordering the deaths of the entire Pazzi family in retaliation.
I mentioned the Lawrence-as-written-by-Robert-Bolt-and-filmed-by-David-Lean echoes; there is also an additional red thread, the question whether, as Guiliano puts it, you can only make it as the first man of Florence if you do as Cosimo did, sometimes be bad in order to do good, or whether you can do good and be good at the same time. The show isn‘t subtle about this, which is why I‘m torn about the Contessina flashbacks: on the one hand, I was glad to see her again, otoh, she‘s basically just there to be Lorenzo‘s conscience, urging him to not just act but be good and end the Medici/Pazzi feud, which through the season he tries to do via reconciliation efforts and in the finale accomplishes by ending the Pazzi. (Other than brother-in-law Gugliemo. Other surviving members of the Pazzi family were edited out of the story.) This, again, works in terms of Lorenzo‘s story but doesn‘t really fit with Contessina in the first season being quite capable of ruthless acts herself. (Though not murder.)
The Pazzi depicted in this version are: Jacobo, played by Sean Bean, who like Dustin Hoffmann as Giovanni de‘ Medici in the first season is the show‘s big „here‘s an internationally known star in our series“ coup and like him gets to be an evil patriarch, sharing the primary antagonist role with his nephew Francesco. While Jacobo is an unambigious villain (whose sole few „human“ moments are when he‘s regarding the miniature of his lost wife he keeps with him all the time), Francesco starts out as a villain, is then revealed via flashbacks to have been a childhood friend of Lorenzo‘s before his uncle indoctrinated him while in the present Lorenzo manages to get him change sides with a mixture of good strategic suggestions and emotional appeals, then is manipulated back to the Pazzi side of the Force by his uncle and ends up as the main killer in the brutal death of Guiliano, finally meeting his historic fate of being hanged from the Palazzo Veccio after one last confrontation with Lorenzo. Unsurprisingly, what there is of Medici fanfiction has taken Francesco to its collective bosom. I have some reservations. Not that I can‘t see Francesco/Lorenzo, I totally can, but I think what I‘ve seen of fanfic too easily blames his crimes totally on Jacobo and ignores that in the episode where he‘s introduced, he has some thugs beat up Guiliano (who earlier hurt Jacobo in an argument) and kicks him when he‘s already lying on the street. Sorry, but that already illustrates a brutally vicious streak which gets vented again after his second heel turn. It doesn’t help that in the episode where his uncle manipulates him back, Francesco five minutes earlier says Jacobo is an arch manipulator and falls for it anyway. The episode tries to do something along the lines of Jago and Othello (flimsy evidence invented or distorted), but that works in a play where the time between Othello deciding on Desdemona‘s death and her murder is relatively short; Francesco turning against his wife Novella (whom Jacobo has convinced him is really Lorenzo‘s spy and patsy), ending his friendship with Lorenzo and ending up as a prime mover in the murder and attempted more of both brothers takes several episodes, i.e. weeks or months of in show chronology, which is why in most performances, I‘m sorry for Othello but find myself more in a „you deserve this“ mode when Francesco meets his maker.
(Especially since the historical gesture of Francesco hugging the brothers before they enter the Duomo (to secretly check whether they‘re wearing body armor under their clothing) due to the reframing of his relationship with Lorenzo gets that extra Judas flavour, and what he does to Guiliano comes without hesitation and is real butchery.)
The third Pazzi depicted in the show is Gugliemo, who is also the most nondescript: he‘s basically there as the young naive lover to match Bianca de’ Medici as the female version of young naive lover. Early in the show, they go through a standard forbidden love tale, then when they get married (and Lorenzo manages to turn this to his advantage in the campaign to lure Francesco to the Medici side of the Force), they disappear into the background, and the one truly interesting and captivating scene they have is in the finale, when Bianca realises that Gugliemo at least knew something was up and very wrong indeed due to a letter Francesco sent him, and can‘t be sure just how much he knew or didn‘t know before her brother got murdered by his brother.
I should add that in general, the dialogue on the show tends to be servicable; you get real clunkers like „what is going on in that brilliant mind of yours?“, but thankfully not that often. The actors manage to elevate it quite a lot, though; a scene like Lucrezia de‘ Medici manipulating Carlo (that would be Cosimo‘s illegiatimate son Maddalena was pregnant with in last season‘s show finale) into urging Clarice Orsini to abondon her plan to become a nun which at first he really doesn‘t want to is made brillliant by Sarah Parish‘s expression and the way she says „but it will require forgiveness“.
Brothers in historical shows usually come in two flavours: more often than not as rivals, occasionally as allies, sometimes as both though not necessarily at the same time. Guiliano is one of the rare staunch supporter brothers (with great chemistry to boot); him going behind Lorenzo‘s back is not even a question. He also falls into the category of quippy partying sibling to his brother‘s working sibling (step forward, brothers played by David Oakes, Juan and Ernst both, as well as Philippe D‘Orleans in any version, oh, and Princess Margaret in „The Crown“), but unlike the other party goes except for the Versailles version of Philippe he ready to work when needed and is rather good at it. He also gets to play truthteller/pessimist to Lorenzo‘s optimist, and since he‘s played by Bradley James, he gets to be shirtless a lot. (The show goes with the „Simonetta Vespucci and Guiliano de‘ Medici were the models for Botticelli‘s Venus and Mars painting. Meaning we see him repeatedly looking like this. The problem with that is that the earliest possible date for that painting is after both their deaths, but then agian, show!Sandro‘s painting is destroyed in the finale, so presumably in the Mediciverse he recreates it at a later point.) Considering that this is - after Arthur in i<>Merlin and Lowell In I, Zombie - the third young man I‘ve seen Bradley James play who dies young and in a violent way to the devastation of the show‘s hero, he‘s starting to feel as sure a sign of doom as Sean Bean to his characters.
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Let‘s see, what else: the show goes surprisingly easy on Pope Sixtus. I mean, I didn‘t expect the beyond camp glorious over-the-top-ness of Da Vinci Demons Evil McEvil Pope, but they keep him on the lighter side of morally ambiguous by blaming Salviati for most of the darker deeds, and when he gives his famous statement (that he can‘t condone murder, but you know, Lorenzo is surely a villain and removing him would be a service to the church, but, again, can‘t condone murder), the show just lets him say the first part and Salviati the seocnd. Though the way the aftermath is played does signal Sixtus is aware what he‘s okayed just now. Mind you, at this point the plan is still to kill both brothers at dinner. The sheer blaphemy of killing them on the holiest day of the year, during Easter Sunday mass at the moment of transubstation makes the show‘s version of it being a last minute change of plan (since Guiliano didn‘t show up at the feast and Easter Sunday mass was the sole opportunity where the conspirators knew both Medici brothers would be present, in public, and thus approachable) quite plausible anyway. (If, that is, you assume Sixtus was sincere in his faith, which this show does.)
In conclusion: not stellar, but pushing various of my emotional buttons really well. I‘m awaiting the third serason, which presumably will feature the two years Florence was at war with the Papacy and Lorenzo‘s Neapolitan gamble.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1348950.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.