• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 25, 2024

A new Netflix series about the Black Death of the 14th century is inspired, at least in part, by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This connection is made in the publicity materials provided by Netflix for the show, which is called “The Decameron.” It starts streaming on Thursday. 

The press material tells us that “The Decameron” was a 14th-century book of the same title that was some of kind of collection of erotic tales.

It was written sometime during the period of the Black Death, a pandemic of bubonic plague that some historians estimate killed 50 million people. The period of the plague was 1346 to 1353.

Basically, the book tells the story of a group of upper-crusty noblemen and noblewomen who flee Florence in 1848 to a country estate owned by one of their own, where they expect to sit out the plague in baronial splendor.

The TV show makes this story the basis for its comedic storyline. The connection to our recent, modern-day pandemic is made in a Q&A in the press material with Kathleen Jordan, the creator of the TV show.

“I was an English major in college and was familiar with the book, but I hadn’t read it then,” Ms. Jordan informs us.

“I also have kind of an obsession with the Bubonic Plague and had been interested in it since I was in fourth grade and did three different book reports on it.

“When the COVID-19 pandemic happened, I wanted to figure out how to write about it, and the things I was noticing in our culture, with a little bit of ironic distance. It occurred to me that the plague is a good breeding ground for some of those thematic conversations.”

Well, she might see the need for “thematic conversations” about pandemics, but I doubt this need has occurred to many others.

The COVID-19 pandemic killed 1.19 million Americans. Is it really time now for a comedy series inspired by it?

“Too soon?” is the question comedians ask in a tongue-in-cheek way when they do a joke on, say, a terrible event that happened less than a century ago. Where the COVID-19 pandemic is concerned, the answer to the question is yes.

But “The Decameron” will be seen by so few people that the vast community of COVID survivors are unlikely to become aware of it.

For one thing, no one will be attracted to this show by its name, except perhaps precocious fourth graders.

As a title, “The Decameron” is as obscure as a distant planet. It contains no information about the show at all.

The TV Blog would have suggested “The Black Death: A Comedy,” but alas, nobody asked me.

The Netflix press material contains a saucy invitation to a 14th-century bacchanal. “You are cordially invited to a wine-soaked sex romp set in the Italian countryside,” says the publicity boilerplate, which goes on to describe the show as a “soapy, dark comedy.”

No one except the producers and writers of this show will connect the dots from this “wine-soaked sex romp” to our recent, deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

“The Decameron” starts streaming Thursday, July 25, on Netflix.