In The Spectator, James Delingpole asserted that Netflix “massacred” Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterwork with its new series, The Decameron. Yet it should be understood that the liberties it takes are in the name of entertainment. We meet our principal characters in a medieval Tuscan villa, where they’ve arrived on holiday to escape the bubonic plague. Among others, there’s the noble Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) and his physician, Dioneo (Amar Chadha-Patel), the high-strung bachelorette Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) and her servant, Misia (Saoirse-Monica Jackson). It’s a perfect storm of friction and chaos, comically elevated by their group’s realization that they are stranded at their oasis in perpetuity. As we all know from the lockdown days of our own recent pandemic, there’s only so long that one can live in isolation before the wheels begin to come off. In The Decameron, they go flying. —Jack Sullivan