Its not TV. Its The Young Pope.
We hope HBO will pardon our repurposing of their famous catchphrase for the sake of celebrating what creator Paolo Sorrentino, star Jude Law and everyone else involved in this extraordinary pulp-prestige TV project have wrought. But hey, if the slogan fits, wear it. Flip the channels or scroll through the streaming services all you want, but you wont find anything like this. Its combination of tightly controlled tone with beautifully bizarre flights of fancy and absolutely colossal camp stands alone. Its Hannibal for lapsed Catholics.
Where to begin with tonights installment,? Right at the start, with a shot of a rider on horseback who turns out to be a wandering healer with the wounds of the stigmata? Or his conversation with the sheep handlers who provide for his sermon? (Its not a sheep! This is the Madonna! Baaaa!) Or maybe you jump forward a scene, to the exchange between Pope Pius XIII and his assistant, Sister Suree (played by Nadee Kammellaweera). Why is their chat, about her dying sister back in Sri Lanka, edited with the staccato rhythms of Jack Webbs Dragnet? Why do we hear the Popes dialogue through the tinny buzz of the nuns hearing aid, and why dont we find out the source of said buzz until the end of the scene? Because it puts the viewer on the same disoriented, intimidated footing as poor Suree? Because its cool? Or both?
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Or how about the crushing denouement of that storyline? The good sisters sister has passed on, it seems, and rather than send her back to Sri Lanka for the funeral, our man Lenny has the body choppered into the Vatican so he can perform the service himself. Its the perfect Pius XIII combination of genuine piety and imperial arrogance until the latter wins out when Suree cant stop crying. Believers dont cry, he snarls. You dont believe. At her lowest moment, he humiliates her for the same sin of disbelief that he himself is all too susceptible to.
Perhaps we should pick another storyline, like Cardinal Voiellos most ruthless power play yet? The scheming Secretary of State has learned from his spymaster Amatucci that the Popes other assistant, Father Valente, has had an affair with Ester, the Swiss Guardsmans wife to whom the Pope has taken a shine. (A seconds-long flashback reminds us that the pretty blonde looks a whole lot like his missing mother, which hoo boy, paging Cardinal Freud!) In a scene straight out of a Godfather movie, he summons the poor woman to his residence late at night and paces back and forth behind a virtual wall of candelabras, threatening to expose her adultery unless she does what he says. Later conversations between her and the Holy Father indicate her mission is seduction.
And yet! Despite this dastardly deed, Voiello not only gets some of the nights best jokes (I was about to laugh, he deadpans, but I stopped myself, because I have a certain class.). He also gets the episodes most moving scene, as he visits Girolamo, the mentally and physically disabled boy he babysits for nearly every night. You are the only soul in the world without sin, he tells the kid, who responds with half-comprehending delight. You who do not know, and will never know, what it means to live inside a wrong life every day. The cardinal talks a good game, but deep down hes so tormented by his own sins that he seeks forgiveness and understanding from a child who can truly offer neither.
Then there is Esters plight itself. She couches her first pass at Pius in terms of her and her husband Peters inability to conceive. The pope, sensing her discomfort with her spouse even before she brings it up herself (Im not profound, he explains regarding his insight, Im presumptuous); he instructs her to make a gift of your beauty to her husband, and God will repay it in kind. He winds up accidentally seeing the couple having sex against the window of their house, and drops to his knees in a prayer so passionate its practically sexual itself. Meanwhile, the woman is fantasizing about His Holiness coming to her like the angel in Berninis sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. The sacred and the profane collide like a truck accident.
Ester is not the only one having visions. Monsignor Gutierrez the gentle alcoholic in whom the Pope confides and over whom Voiello holds the threat of exposure returns to the spot where the Madonna appeared to him as a teenager, convincing him to join the priesthood. She reassures him that hes still that same boy, and shes still there to protect him. Will it be enough to get him through his high-profile transfer to New York to investigate a major sex-abuse scandal? Its enough for a gorgeous scene, thats for sure, and a complement both to Esters fantasy and Belardos afternoon looking through old family photos with the Vaticans nuns, bathed in the golden sunlight.
Last, and in no way least, theres the state visit from Greenlands glamorous prime minister (Carolina Carlsson) and her charming gay deputy. The latter inspires the Vaticans leader to order a merciless purge of every homosexual priest in the clergy. (To Voiellos credit, he resorts to the seduction scheme to stop this madness.) The former causes him first to lay on the charm with the instant-classic line I know: Im incredibly handsome, but please lets try and forget about that. He browbeats her with the notion that her countrys tiny Catholic community is its true owner, and Everyone else is a guest. But then they sit back and groove to an Italian pop song she gave him as a gift, one he later imagines her dancing to, Twin Peaksstyle; a bogus wikipedia entry about Greenlanders legendary passion for getting down segues into the closing credits. Its sexy, silly, surreal and strangely moving. Its The Young Pope.
Previously: Cardinal Sins