A new big-budget TV series being filmed here, featuring sex,
corruption and violence at the Vatican, isn't expected to cause more
than a ripple in the sex scandal-plagued Catholic Church.
The
Borgias, a $45-million, Canadian-Irish-Hungarian series starring Oscar
winner Jeremy Irons, centres around history's most notorious pope.
Rodrigo
Borgia, who deployed bribery to become Pope Alexander VI in 1492, was
famous for his voracious sexual appetite, corruption, and use of
violence to try to ensure a dynasty for his out-of-wedlock children.
"My
hunch would be that, having lived through The Da Vinci Code and Angels
and Demons, the Vatican won't be terribly shocked by a movie on the
Borgias," according to John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for CNN and
the National Catholic Reporter.
Oxford University
professor Diarmaid MacCulloch noted Wednesday that the upcoming series,
to be broadcast next spring in the U.S. on Showtime and in Canada on CTV
and the Bravo channel, is far from the first time the notorious Borgia
family has been portrayed in popular culture.
The Borgia
family was the inspiration for novelist Mario Puzo's The Godfather, and
has prompted numerous films, TV series, books, and even video games.
"I
think that the Vatican would be fairly blase about a TV series about
the Borgias," MacCulloch told Postmedia News in an email.
An official in the Vatican press office refused to comment.
Producer
James Flynn, interviewed on the set at a massive studio here in
Hungary's wine country, about 30 kilometres outside Budapest, said the
project — the brainchild of Oscar-winning Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan
—_probably would have been controversial in the recent past.
"I think people have moved on," Flynn, who is also Irish, told Postmedia News.
"I
think 15 years ago, yes, in Ireland, there would have been people who
would be outraged, because the Catholic Church (before recent exposure
of widespread sex abuse in Ireland) was held in such high regard.
"Today I think they'll probably ignore it."
Flynn
said The Borgias could, however, benefit from the Vatican's current
high media profile due to increased public curiosity about the
institution.
"In some sense, it could help," he said.
"There
is the simple question of what actually goes on at the Vatican? There
is a bank, there are employees. There must be politics at the Vatican.
How do you elect the pope? That's all covered."
Showtime
acquired The Borgias to fill the void left by The Tudors, a successful
Canadian-Irish-British production loosely based on the life of Henry
VIII and based in the same time period as The Borgias.
The Tudors completed its fourth and final season last spring.
The
Borgias has a strong Canadian element, with veteran actor Colm Feore
playing Alexander's archrival, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. Montreal
actor Francois Arnaud plays Cesare, while Canadian Jeremy Podeswa
directs several of the episodes.
British actor Holliday
Grainger, who plays Alexander VI's daughter Lucrezia, said it never
occurred to her that the series could gain added attention due to the
sex-abuse scandal.
But Grainger, whose character is engaged
in several sexual relationships and is violently raped by her first
husband, said her only concern is about her grandfathers — one an
Italian Catholic, the other an Irish Catholic.
"I don't know how they're going to handle it."
SIC: VS/INT'L