“Expect more debauchery in the Borgias, Season 2”

So says Toronto Star reviewer Chris Alexander of next season’s (fall 2011) TV series about the Borgias and especially Borgia Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503).

We learn that what the reviewer calls “Neil Jordan’s stylish and decidedly adult (i.e., pornographic ) hit” had a very successful run on United States TV Showtime: the Borgias, and in Canada on Bravo and CTV.  The first season’s DVD is also out.  There is a pot of gold to be made.

The series is a Canada-Hungary-United Kingdom co-production and therefore had attracted Canadian admiration (Globe and Mail in May 2011 and Toronto Star, Sunday August 28).  “It charts the cutthroat and decadent behaviour of the near-mythical Borgia clan,” we are told.

Catholic Insight September issue features a nine-page article, “What you don’t know about the Borgia Pope”.

Author Joseph Bertrand Darcy shows that the Borgia story is not “near mythical but all mythical.”

            Reviewer Alexander seems to agree, even if somewhat uncertainly.  Actress Joanne Whalley from New York who plays the supposed mistress and the supposed mother of the Pope’s children has no doubts.  “The Borgias is absolutely a soap opera.  It is melodramatic as it should be, but you know, so much of what the family did is all shrouded in rumour and myth, that Neil (Jordan) is perfectly justified taking narrative liberties.”  Well yes, that is what fiction writers have been doing for 500 years.

And that is Joseph Darcy’s point: the whole narrative is fiction. 

Catholic Insight, September 2011, $5.00.  Separate booklet, colour photographs, $3.00 plus shipping.