It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Blistering performances.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Compared to those two, it's not the equal of Rome, but is definitely on the level of Tudors. If you want to know what Pope Francis is trying to deal with, this isn't a bad place to start. Irons is hamming it up, but it actually works most of the time. Good supporting cast. Costume porn! Murder and lust and betrayal and other kinds of entertainment. More costume porn! Suffers from the same disappearing character syndrome as Tudors, where characters show up, gets introduced and established and then just drop off the face of the Earth and are never seen or heard from again. It gets bogged down with melodrama at times. And since it only got three seasons, it ends rather abruptly, just when things were getting interesting. Didn't love it, but definitely liked it.

Review of Season One: THE BORGIAS is a historical TV drama reminiscent of ROME or THE TUDORS. The focus of the story this time around is the Borgia family of 15th century Italy, who were renowned as the world's "biggest crime family". Murder, incest, intrigue, and political plotting were the order of the day for these guys, and when one of them became Pope...well, you can guess what was to follow.This show was a labour of love for writer/director Neil Jordan, who creates a very polished and professional-looking product. The historical authenticity is second to none, and Jordan has assembled a team of professionals in terms of the actors. You expect the likes of Jeremy Irons, Colm Feore, and Sean Harris to be excellent - and they are - but the newcomers are equally engaging. Francois Arnaud is particularly entrancing as the driving force behind the show.The story lines are made up of the usual political intrigues, albeit with a religious edge this time around. Sex and murder are the order of the day, and anybody who considers themselves a fan of similarly-themed TV programmes like GAME OF THRONES or SPARTACUS will be in their element. The second half of this season really picks up with some war-themed episodes which don't shy away from the violence, and the season finale ably sets up the next series to come. I for one am eagerly expecting it...

This show does take many leisures with the actual events of the Borgia family and makes up a great deal for this series. I honestly didn't have too many complaints with this series, since most shows based off of history seem to exaggerate or change actual events, the thing that bothered me a great deal, that it ruined me ever enjoying this series was the lack of a sense of time. Or maybe it didn't lack a sense of time, just was very little attention paid to detail. It seemed like a great deal of time went pass during the whole series but I couldn't really tell or believe that it had because the Borgia baby NEVER grew/aged at all. During the time frame of all three seasons the child could have aged at least a few years but it never did. This left me to believe that all these events happened in less than a year and a half, if that. Or just threw me off the time frame altogether. That ignored detail took away a great deal for me.

This huge melodramatic interpretation of the famous Borgia family of the 15th and 16th centuries is so smooth and fabulous to watch.I just discovered it two days ago, 9/26/2014, on Netflix and after the first episode it was like binge eating potato chips, you can't have just one, you can't stop till you've eaten the whole bag. I just came off a 19 hour Borgia binge and had to make myself stop to sleep.There is just so much worry in every episode cause it appears that the Borgia clan was just about to topple and be destroyed every single day, and so much loud dramatic music that just makes every single murder that much more worrysome, and every murder just seems even more necessary and that much more dramatic.There is also wayyyy too much constant hetero sex. Way too much. We've seen every characters butt and ass many many times. So much so I've had to fast forward through the endless scenes of one character on top of another going up and down, up and down, up and down till finally, finally they got back to the daily murders and shakedowns of the Christian faithful.But, what grabbed my attention was the loyal hit-man that the family relied on so much to do the everyday housekeeping murders and attending to the daily torturing schedules that made every double-cross just that much easier for the Borgias to quickly loot that person's lands and fortunes and add them to the hungry hungry coffers of the Catholic Church.At first its not apparent what Micheletto's primary sexual orientation is, since he keeps it his most deeply buried secret (which says a lot considering the extensive body count he was responsible for adding to almost daily in perfect secrecy) but once we discover Micheletto's sexual preference we also get to discover a new part of him. Frankly, even before we were shown Micheletto completely naked, front and back, (played by actor Sean Harris) I had already become more and more focused on him because every time Micheletto was on-screen everything about the story become so much more magnetically intoxicatingly interesting. But, once they added his sexuality to the story, I couldn't take my eyes off him.So, thats it. You've got to fall in love with this on-screen mass-murderer, this Torturer with a capital "T", this angel of death, this Micheletto! Cause, for some reason he's just captivating. And the rest of "The Borgias" is just luscious, luscious wicked fun.