The Borgias

Showtime has tantalized me for ages with glimpses of Jeremy Irons growling and groping his way through a role as history's most debauched pope. It finally arrives Sunday, and you won't be disappointed.

If you can get past the many face of Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia/Pope Alexander VI, in Showtime's lush and luscious historical series The Borgias, you're in for a full-out good time.

Murder and sexual predation sure look fun when they're done by pretty people in luscious gowns. Jeremy Irons is splendidly depraved as Rodrigo, and Holliday Grainger (Robin Hood) so sunnily sweet as Lucrezia that it's damn near impossible to hold a little arsenic against her.

I expected it to be yet another R-rated historical soap with an overqualified cast. It's that. (The series is co-executive produced by ... wait a second ... Michael Hirst? Not him again!) But it's also good. And addictive--not just because of the blood-and-boobs aspects, but because it takes you inside an unfamiliar world and shows you how it works.

Writer-director Neil Jordan's first foray into series TV is everything you'd want in a premium-cable costume drama: lush, romantic, violent, tragic, funny--and far enough in the past that few of us are likely to argue.

What makes for a mixed stewardship of the Roman Catholic Church can also make for lively television.

Despite all the aforementioned intrigues, The Borgias so far isn't quite as bawdy, foul-minded or over the top as its predecessor. It moves more deliberately, sometimes a bit ploddingly.

The Borgias, created by filmmaker Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game"), is the better of the two [The other is "Camelot"], thanks largely to Irons, a strong supporting cast and sophisticated production values.

The storytelling can feel sluggish at times, but as the ruthless, morally bankrupt pope (dude has two mistresses and four kids!), Irons is at his creepy, dead-eyed-stare best.

It doesn't matter, finally, what becomes of them, we watch less in suspense than in wonder: wonder at the cheek and gall of these characters; wondering how true any of it is; and wondering, most profitably, at the performances, the least of which are good and the best of which are good fun.

It might have benefited from the subtler writing touch of Anderson, who was a prolific writer for stage (Anne of the Thousand Days, for instance) and screen, specializing in long-ago history, but it's still good fun on a big level.

Like the notorious family that bribed its way into the Vatican's papal chamber while sullying many a Roman bedchamber, we want our money's worth. And The Borgias wickedly delivers, serving up an operatic feast of delicious malice and unbridled lust: for power and wealth, for carnal pleasure and vulgar theatrics.

This glossy, gossipy look at the Renaissance in the time of Machiavelli isn't a history lesson, it's a lurid family drama that happened to change the course of history.

By casting Feore, Arnaud, Harris and the magnetic Irons in this Gothic soap opera about randy popes and their enemies, and by taking the world of 15th Century Rome moderately seriously, Jordan ensured that this drama would be more than just a mildly cheesy guilty pleasure. It's not much more than that, mind you, but you won't have to go to confession after you've partaken of this Showtime costume drama.

The fact is, these kinds of grand historical reimaginings can be a scrumptious combination of costume drama acting, soap opera theatrics and pay cable promiscuousness. That'll make the hours fly by. And it doesn't mean your pleasure needs to be all that guilty.

The Borgias is an adequate soap but one that's also rife with missed opportunities.

Unfortunately, Iron's not in every scene, and the 100-minute premiere, after a promising opening, becomes bogged down in political intrigue as his rivals scheme to remove the new pope.

The Borgias is merely the network's most recent, shallow exploration into precisely how murderous, horny, and fabulously costumed the wealthy were at the turn of the 16th century.

That restraint, if that's the right word for it, leaves the program feeling muddled, spending too much time with the younger Borgias--who only live up to the "bore" part--and the labyrinthine workings of Vatican politics.

With writing and directing by Neil Jordan and Irons in the lead, it has pedigree and promise. And yet The Borgias, besides the glaring Tudors parallels, is one of those shows that seems like it might actually be better if it were worse.

You will absolutely, one hundred percent love every second of Showtime's new series, The Borgias. If you are a set designer, that is. Or a costumer. Otherwise, you might be mildly entertained and yet still feel a gnawing hunger for something more--a flavor shot or two with your creme de la creme.

In the first four episodes, there isn't anyone or anything to root for, other than history's corrective hand.

It's a very straightforward, sincere, dull accounting of all the trouble caused by Rodrigo, son Cesare (Francois Arnaud, frequently nude), daughter Lucrezia (Holliday Grainger) and company cause with their newfound power and station.