PAPAL FALLIBILITY

LAW’S ‘YOUNG POPE’ BEARS HEAVY CROSS OF BOREDOM

‘The Young Pope” asks you to take a lot on faith. The HBO drama about a new babyfaced pontiff (Jude Law, “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) would have you believe the College of Cardinals would elect an American candidate they knew nothing about — not any of his political positions, priorities, sexual orientation, even, apparently, his appearance. Lenny Belardo, the boy who was abandoned years ago at an orphanage, takes charge with a vengeance as Pope Pius XIII. He seems to subsist on Cherry Coke Zero and his hatred of humanity. The former can't be stocked fast enough in the Vatican; the latter is bottomless. He wants to drive the church back — 400 years, to the time when it was the most powerful force in the Western world and universally feared. Love is weakness, and he doesn't have any time for that. One of his first acts: Lenny makes the priest who serves as the Vatican confessor rat on everyone else's confessions so he can keep tabs on who might be talking about him. As for his own transgressions, he says, “My only sin, and it is an enormous one, is that my conscience accuses me of nothing.” Lenny, by the way, thinks he's more handsome than Jesus Christ. About the only confidant he has — barely — is Sister Mary (Diane Keaton, “Annie Hall”), who took him in when he was a boy. The first two episodes (HBO has crafted an odd scheduling scheme, with the 10 episodes running for five weeks on Sundays and Mondays at 9 p.m.) center on the growing tension about the pope's first address to the crowds at St. Peter's Basilica. When he finally delivers it — in shadow, so he can't be seen or photographed — reactions range from perplexed to terrified.

Some of the bishops around him would like to rein in Lenny but strategies vary. Cardinal Angelo Voiello (Silvio Orlando, “The Caiman”) tries to appeal to the pope's kinder instincts. Better he should try to walk back the world.

Lenny recognizes him as a threat and orders Sister Mary to shadow him. What she discovers about Voiello's nighttime activities only confuses her loyalties.

The first American pope has a particular loathing for Harvard University, calling it in Monday's episode “a place in decline.”

Law, who serves as an executive producer, approaches his role as if he were playing the ultimate Mean Girl without any of the camp. Better by leap years is James Cromwell (“Babe”), who plays his embittered mentor Michael Spencer.

“You've ruined my life. You've ruined any sense of destiny in my life,” he rails against Lenny.

When Cromwell is onscreen, it's as if someone snatched away your cracker and dropped a sizzling T-bone steak in your lap. He gives the drama life and wings.

Director Paolo Sorrentino (“The Great Beauty”) is fond of visual flourishes and tricks that seem out of a first semester filmmaking class. The music cues seem inappropriate and are distracting in some scenes.

The show was an enormous hit in Italy, which only proves European tastes are unfathomable or Italian viewers really want to stick it to the Vatican.

After three episodes, I was weary of watching Lenny humiliate the next person who wandered into his path just because he could.

All “The Young Pope” proves is that absolute power is absolutely boring.