I’m only 7 episodes in, but this is some fo the best TV I have ever seen. It’s surreal, cynical and spiritual at the same time. The characters are full of life and truthful, yet they are also bigger than life in weird little ways. You can really see Sorrentino’s hand. It has the same mood and intangible qualities as The Great Beauty and Youth. It feels like one of his movie, with just slightly lower production values but equal care given to direction and writing. It does not pander to typical TV plotting, allowing itself to be more oblique and not explaining or foreshadowing everything. Incredibly refreshing, and also served as a reminder for me that although there’s a lot of quality TV right now, a lot of it is cut from the same cloth and a little bit samey (if good).
Definitely a masterpiece, imho, and in the all time top 5 of TV series for me (the only other recent one is The Affair -first two seasons, jury’s still out on the third-).
Can’t believe there no thread about this! Anybody here seen it?
[quote=“Telefrog, post:2, topic:127490, full:true”]The US doesn’t get this until January 15th on HBO, so that’s probably why there isn’t much talk yet.
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Damn, well sorry, will be back around here in January then :P
Edit: now that I think about it, I really wonder how this is going to play on the US. Did Sorrentino’s movies get a lot of traction there? They sort of did here (within the serious movie circles, of course. Didn’t go mainstream).
Really hoping this is good. The presentation of religion, especially this up-close and personal, is often screwy in popular culture, so that’s the big question mark for the show. But Jude Law! Can’t wait for it to hit the states. Glad you like it so much, Juan.
The show covers a range of religious attitudes, to be sure. The titular character, because of it’s uniqueness, it’s the harder to grasp. but the rest of the show is full of presentations that range from cynical to earnest, and all of them seem humane (if lyrical at times). But this is a very personal valuation.
Yeah, it’s definitely not for everyone. The tone and pacing is very specific and certainly an acquired taste. You need to like that kind of film-making, which is certainly not a given. I love it, but my sister, for example, upon watching The Great Beauty said that simply nothing happens in that movie and that bored her.
I think more stuff happens in the series, due to it being TV, but certainly way less that in a typical TV production. Me and my wife laugh out loud with the series all the time, but that’s not because it’s a comedy (it isn’t) but because it has a very specific (and subdued) sense of humor we really enjoy.
After watching Ep. 8 yesterday now it has become my favorite TV series.
The sense of humor I got, mostly. Laughed out loud in some of those wonderfully absurd moments. Particularly interactions between Lenny and Voiello were amusing. But still, too much empty space. I guess it also doesn’t help that I am atheist who doesn’t know a single religious person and thinks religion is mostly useless/harmfull mumbojumbo.
The intro first scene with the dream speech was damn awesome though :)
I will still probably finish the first season at least, someday.
Yeah, what Nezz said. I’m definitely willing to see where it’s going, and I’m willing to let it tell a story about a Curia it has invented rather than one that resembles the real thing, as long as the characters are interesting and the politicking is exciting. I was intrigued by the first episodes odd form of storytelling and Pope Pius’ mysterious, Puckish personality. The penitential tribunal is still out on this one.
I think you guys are in for a ride. The show shows more respect for the faith than any recent work I remember except maybe Silence. It felt very truthful, at least from a former European Catholic point of view.
Second episode was definitely fascinating. I do wish the writer had listened a little more to how Catholic clergy actually speak. I think they could have come up with a still radical/reactionary message for Pius to give that nevertheless sounds like the thought of a man who had to have been weaned on St. Paul and Aquinas and John Henry Newman.
After reading the following review I just had to give it a whirl…
The Young Pope is also insane. Really, truly insane. You won’t believe some of the things that happen on this show. There’s a montage of Jude Law putting on robes set to “Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO. Diane Keaton answers the door to her nun’s quarters in a t-shirt that says “I’m a virgin but this is an old shirt.” A kangaroo roams the Vatican. The pope chastises his staff about breakfast because the only thing he wants is a Cherry Coke Zero. Cardinal Voiello has a preposterous mole on his cheek that a cursory Google image search of the actor who plays him reveals is fake. The whole thing opens with a fantasy sequence that features our protagonist crawling out of a baby pyramid, and if you read that and thought to yourself, “Wait, does he mean ‘baby pyramid’ like ‘a small pyramid,’ or like an actual pyramid made of babies?,” then I am pleased to inform you that you are now asking exactly the right questions about this show.
Well, I’d say it was a fascinating failure. They totally should have called it The Orphan Pope, because that’s really what the main motivator of the story was. Man, was it obsessed with orphans. Which could have been interesting, but they kept their oblique approach to everything all the way to the end and never really paid off his desire to see his parents effectively, I didn’t think. In fact, they didn’t pay off much at all.
Again, I know it’s asking for a lot, but I would have appreciated a more authentic representation of the men and women who wield so much power in the Church. They talked all the time about God in the abstract, and hardly ever spoke about Jesus. Or St. Peter for that matter. I think the way the politics in the Vatican were presented was fine and interesting. In fact, if there was any MVP outside of Jude Law (who of course gave a great performance), it was the Italian actor who played the Cardinal secretary of state. Great performance, and great character.
Well, it was a promising concept. Too bad it was just a little half-baked.
