Da Vinci delivers
Da Vinci’s Demons and historical accuracy go about as well together as Game of Thrones and Shakespeare. No one should base a term paper on it. It was conceived and written, after all, by creator of the Blade trilogy and co-writer of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movies, David S. Goyer.
The aim is rip-roaring entertainment.
And as Da Vinci’s Demons returns for its second season, it delivers. This is no dry, musty costume drama. The young Leonardo, as played by British theatre actor Tom Riley, is cut more from the DiCaprio cloth than the Italian Renaissance painter-sculptor-mathematician-engineer of historical record, and Da Vinci’s Demons is more enjoyable for it.
Demons focuses on da Vinci’s various and sundry romantic liaisons, his mercurial relationship with the Catholic Church and his squabbles, political and financial, with the Medici and Pazzi clans of Renaissance Florence.
The new season picks up with Da Vinci resolved to bring Lorenzo de’ Medici, ruler of Florence, back from the dead as it were, by doing “whatever it takes” — as they would say in later centuries.
In the coming weeks, Da Vinci’s Demons will venture to the New World and a look at Inca Peru in the time of the conquistadors.
Demons is messy and hard to follow at times, but manages to entertain without being silly.
The cast — Blake Ritson as da Vinci’s nemesis and foil, the conspiratorial Count Girolamo Riario of Imola; Laura Haddock as Lucrezia Donati, mistress to the Medicis and da Vinci’s secret lover; Eros Vlahos as da Vinci’s overly attentive apprentice, Niccolò (Nico) Machiavelli — are up to the job for the most part.
Da Vinci’s Demonsisa romp through history that provides an unapologetically eccentric view of a freethinker. (Super Channel — 10 p.m.) ❚ Leonardo — DiCaprio this time — joins Jonah Hill in a Saturday Night Live repeat from January. This episode was notable for marking Seth Meyers’ second-last appearance as Weekend Update anchor, and this line about Jeremy Bieber, Justin Bieber’s dad: “He’s what you’d get if Ed Hardy released a line of people.” The musical guest is Bastille. (Global — 11:35 p.m., NBC — 12:30 a.m.)