Rage roils on gorgeous Borgias
With its deep, rich shadows and candlelit glow, The Borgias looks like no other drama on TV. Watching this sumptuous and eye-filling epic is a little like studying a moving oil painting
As gorgeous as The Borgias is to look at, though — and this compelling, addictive drama has rarely been more gorgeous than in this week’s episode, the second of the new season — we don’t watch for the pretty pictures. The real appeal of this splendid 15th-century costume epic lies in the cheek and brazenness of its parade of colourful characters: the cardinals, courtesans and petty crooks who descend on the Vatican. The Borgias may be set in the time of Renaissance Italy, but its themes are timeless.
As the episode opens, Pope Alexander VI, played with scenery-chomping relish by Jeremy Irons, is recovering from a recent poisoning. He rails away against the vipers in the Vatican, with its slimy, slithering snakes, “oozing with venom.” Miscreants, all. It’s time to make them pay.
The pope feels his power slipping away, even as his son Cesare (François Arnaud) shaves him with a straight razor, listening patiently as the old man rails. The episode, directed with an almost obsessive attention to detail by Ottawa filmmaker Kari Skogland, is The Borgias at its finest. The words flow poetically, but it’s the palpable emotion that stands out.
Pope Alexander has decided to rid the Vatican of uncooperative cardinals, likening them to spiders trapped in a web of their own making, and Irons can chew off lines like, “It is time to act, to snip those silken threads from their source,” with the best of them.
The Borgias is off to a rousing start, in what looks like its finest season yet. (Sunday, Bravo, 10 p.m.)
■ Doctor Who can be wildly uneven — we know this. Last month’s midseason premiere, written by Sherlock creator Steven Moffat, crackled with energy and vitality. Other episodes, including last week’s exercise in claustrophobia aboard a Russian nuclear submarine, have been more exhausting than enthralling.
Over the years, though, some of Who’s best outings have been the quieter, simpler ones. And in this weekend’s episode, Hide, Doctor Who does what it does best — take a time-worn story idea and turn it on its head.
Hide finds the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his new companion, Clara Oswald (JennaLouise Coleman) stranded in Caliburn House, a spooky home set — where else? — in the middle of a desolate moor. A ghost-hunting professor and a gifted psychic are there too, hoping hope to confirm the existence of the Witch of the Well, a rumoured apparition that has appeared throughout history.
Longtime Doctor Who fans know what to expect: The ghost is real, and possibly the vanguard of some hideous alien invasion. Equally possible, the ghost may be the spirit of some lost, sad child, being chased by a Big Bad somewhere in the dark.
Doctor Who plays with viewers’ expectations. It brims with wit, too, even in its weaker episodes. Yes, it’s silly at times, but it wears its silliness on its sleeve, alongside its heart. (Saturday, Space, 8 p.m.)