Netflix Is Making A New Series About One Of The Worst Times In History
Netflix is getting a new series and it's about one of the darkest periods in human history. But this could be one of their best yet
The world of entertainment used to dictate our schedules. If we wanted to watch a new movie, we had to plan a time to stand in line and get tickets to the theater. If we wanted to see our favorite TV show, we had to organize all social events around the air time. Anyone who loved you knew never to call you during your time of blissful viewing. That is no longer the case as just as many new movies release on streaming services as the theaters every month. And Netflix series release whole seasons at a time that audiences are free to view at their own leisure. It is a brave new world in entertainment, and you can either thank (or curse) Netflix for the change. They became the biggest streaming game in town over the last fifteen years, and they just landed a new series. This one is going to tell a story from a very dark period.
According to a report by Movieweb, Netflix secured the rights to develop the series, The Decameron. One of Netflix’s favorite producers, Jenji Kohan, will bring the series to the screens. She is best known for creating Orange is the New Black, Glow, and Teenage Bounty Hunters. This new project is created by a former collaborator in Kathleen Jordan, who worked on Teenage Bounty Hunters and American Princess. The two will also work as showrunners. They will get a little help in the producer’s chair from Tilted Productions’s Blake McCormick and Tara Herrman. American Crime Story‘s Mike Uppendahl has also been secured to direct.
Netflix’s The Decameron will adapt the medieval collection of stories told by Giovanni Boccaccio. In plague-ridden Florence in the mid-1300s, ten upper-class elites (seven women and three men) escaped to a secluded villa. Each day sees a new person in charge of the daily activities. Most of the time, they involve telling stories about love, survival, and perseverance. All in all, the collection includes 100 stories involving many human vices, such as lust and greed. Some of them are celebrated, while others are condemned. The most famous of the stories in the collection is the last, “The Patient Griselda.” The story follows a peasant woman as the wife of an elite who tests her loyalty by putting her through a bunch of tests. It was adapted by Geoffrey Chaucer as “The Clerk’s Tale” as part of his Canterberry Tales.
Whether Kohan and Jordan elect to take the same approach as the book and make each episode a different day with another main character or try a different approach is unknown. One thing is certain for the Netflix series; there will be a lot of exploration into the deeper themes of humanity. Some of the book’s themes are the power of love, the duality of fortune, the virtue of intelligence, and the folly of vice. Don’t be surprised to see a healthy dose of wealth, hypocrisy, selfishness, and lust. And probably a healthy dose of dark humor.
