In this joint production between Sky Atlantic, Canal+, and HBO, with filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino at the helm, Jude Law plays the new pope in town. He’s known to the world as Pope Pius XIII, but to his surrogate mother and close adviser, Sister Mary (Diane Keaton), he’s still little Lenny Belardo. Oh, yeah — this American is originally from one of New York’s “prestigious” boroughs, and many of those East Coast sensibilities remain intact.
As played by Law, this pope has a chain-smoking and Cherry Diet Coke habit, and is just as nuanced as the sitting pope, but that’s where the similarities end. Pope Lenny accuses the prior regime, which kept an open mind on issues of homosexuality and abortion, of “trying to look hip.” That’s right: If you assumed the HBO route would be for the titular pope to be as liberal and all-inclusive as they come, you’d be wrong.
[lz_ndn video=31467859]
Sorrentino says, “After a [more progressive] pope like Francis, we cannot exclude one like Lenny. He’s a pope who can exist in the very near future.”
For a pope so brilliantly skilled in public relations, like Francis, there has curiously been no comment on the show — this from the man shunning the papal apartments for a basic hotel, driving a second-hand Volvo, and washing the feet of the destitute.
From the Vatican itself: resounding silence. Why? When the first episode aired on Italian television, it was a huge hit, and received the highest rating ever for the first episode of a Sky drama. It has also already been green-lit for a second season.
“The Young Pope” — which premieres on HBO in the U.S. on Jan. 15 — is described in The Guardian as Sorrentino’s “Twin Peaks,” a nod to the auteur’s transition to the small screen after nabbing an Oscar in 2013 for his film “The Great Beauty.”
Related: Even Hollywood’s Obama Tributes Are Bad Acting
The miniseries is Italy’s most expensive TV production ever — $45 million. And it’s paid off in record national ratings and that aforementioned second season.
More about the premise: Belardo is the first-ever American Holy Father and the youngest pope elected by the College of Cardinals. Ordained on the misguided notion that his inexperience and good looks would make him pliable and profitable, Lenny is revealed to be more than the Vatican bargained for.
The series is said to be about “the clear signs of God’s existence.”
After his hippy parents abandoned him, Lenny was raised in an orphanage by nuns — specifically, Keaton’s Sister Mary. Being discarded by liberal-minded, hedonism-seeking parents is sure to stir the standard-issue HBO pot. And while Lenny may be a modern pope, he’s no modernizer.
From ChristianTimes.com: “This is not the first television series that portrays the papacy in a bad light. Canal+ produced a television series in 2011 titled ‘Borgia: Faith and Fear.’ That series depicts Pope Alexander VI as a ruthless pope whose reign is remembered as the most notorious period in the history of the Catholic Church.”
There is reportedly a scene where Belardo confesses that he does not believe in God. He then asks a confessor to tell him the sins of the other cardinals.
Related: Plunging Necklines Couldn’t Save the Globes
Sorrentino has said that the series is about “the clear signs of God’s existence. The clear signs of God’s absence. How faith can be searched for and lost. The greatness of holiness, so great as to be unbearable when you are fighting temptations and when all you can do is to yield to them. The inner struggle between the huge responsibility of the head of the Catholic Church and the miseries of the simple man that fate (or the Holy Spirit) chose as pontiff. Finally, how to handle and manipulate power in a state whose dogma and moral imperative is the renunciation of power and selfless love towards one’s neighbor.”
A priest out of Hartford, Connecticut, might have said it best of all: “If it gets us all talking about God again? That’d be great,” said Father John Georgia.
Join the Discussion
Comments are currently closed.