Religion and power with the Corleones of the Renaissance

A look at The Borgiason Sky

THE BORGIAS

Sky Atlantic

FOR THOSE of us with only a hazy grasp of 15th century papal history – and let's face it, who hasn't? – it helps, before tuning into the new epic TV drama The Borgias(Sky Atlantic, Saturday), to know that the novelist Mario Puzo called the Borgia family the Corleones of the Renaissance. And in the opening scene of Neil Jordan's new nine-part series, if you replace the luscious red robes and cardinals' hats with sharp three-piece suits and fedoras, the set-up could have come straight out of The Godfather.

Pope Innocent VIII is dying and the cardinals have assembled around his deathbed. The lighting and composition make it look like a Renaissance painting but what appears from a distance to be a calm, dignified scene in a sumptuous setting soon reveals itself to be fizzing with an undercurrent of deadly ambition. As the pope (rumoured to be father of 12) gasps that the papacy has been “sullied by greed and lechery”, the cardinals are just waiting to tear each other apart to become the head of the church.

Identically dressed, none of them initially stand out until the light falls on the wolfish features of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (Jeremy Irons), and so begins an episode of vicious power play and politicking as the wealthy, always-scheming Borgia fixes the election with bribes, flattery and promises, and becomes Pope Alexander VI. Jordan is the writer and producer – he directs some episodes including the opener – and in Irons he found an actor who, with his chiselled features and dark, blank eyes, can convey debauchery and viciousness with just the merest glance. In the same way as the gym-toned and gorgeous Jonathan Rhys Meyers doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to Henry VIII in The Tudors, Irons doesn't physically resemble Rodrigo Borgia who was, according to portraits from the time – and they usually flatter – an enormously fat and ugly man. For all the painstaking accuracy in many areas, TV costume epics always play more than a little loose with the facts.

And just to be explicitly clear that is wasn't just power and money that drove this family, the second scene in Saturday's first episode is a full-on sex romp – fans of this new, intensely popular breed of historical costume dramas, such as The Tudorsand Camelot, know that it's only a matter of time before someone's kit comes off – and here it's Cesare Borgia (François Arnaud), a bishop and favoured son of the new pope and effectively his consigliore. In the course of the episode he sees off his father's main rival (Orsini, a powerful cameo from Derek Jacobi) by poisoning him, and recruits the assassin the cardinals had paid to kill his father to become the family's personal henchman. It's the first episode but already it's clear that the murderous plotting is only beginning.

Religion is here too, but it’s intrinsically linked with money, politics and power. “What will we call him?” a sweet and innocent-looking Lucrezia Borgia asks her brother, with whom she may be having a sexual relationship, at the inauguration. “Holy father,” he replies.

It all looks gorgeous – which is what we have come to expect from TV historical drama – and anyway, a series set in the upper echelons of the Catholic Church gives unrivalled opportunities for magnificent settings and luscious over-the-top costumes.

In some scenes you can almost smell the incense.

The Borgiashas already been shown in the US on the Showtime cable network where it was a massive success with average ratings better than the fourth and highest rating series of The Tudors. The "sexy pope drama", as it has been called, drew a record high of 3.71 million viewers for one episode – the best ratings for a new show on the network – and it's already been commissioned for a second series.