Netflix's 8-Part 'The Buccaneers Meets The Tudors' Adaptation Makes Bridgerton Look Tame

Netflix's most famous period drama series may be Bridgerton, but the streaming platform has a medieval-set show that's twice as bawdy and unhinged, and is best described as "The Buccaneers meets The Tudors." Apple TV's The Buccaneers sees its main characters, five high-society American women, hilariously dealing with culture clash in Gilded Age London, while Showtime's The Tudors, which chronicles the tumultuous reign of King Henry VIII, kicked off the trend of spicing up the once-stuffy period genre.

Premiering in 2024 and based on the 14th-century short-story collection, The Decameron took the steaminess of Bridgerton and placed it in 1348 Italy. With the Black Plague devastating the population of Florence at an alarming rate, a group of obnoxious nobles gather up their servants and flee to the pastoral Villa Santa in Tuscany, where they enjoy copious amounts of food, wine, sex, and oh so much backstabbing.

Like The Buccaneers, The Decameron's main characters are bursting with youthful energy and crackling wit, but it's the Netflix show's similarities to The Tudors that give it a bite that Bridgerton lacks. Though much more humorous than the Showtime series, The Decameron exquisitely captures that being a noble isn't all fun and games; it's bloody, it's violent, and at times, it's lethal.

How Netflix's The Decameron Compares To Bridgerton

While both Bridgerton and The Decameron feature plenty of sex, these scenes wildly differ in tone. Though explicit, Bridgerton's love scenes are much more erotic and tasteful, while The Decameron's are bawdy to the hilt. In other words, Bridgerton makes its audiences swoon; The Decameron ​​​​​​makes its audiences' jaws drop.

The Decameron's audacity isn't limited to the bedroom, either. Tales of the Black Death are not for the faint of heart, and the show doesn't hold back in showing the horrors of the disease, albeit in a gross-out, pitch-black comedic kind of way.

The plague isn't solely responsible for The Decameron's many deaths, however. From a drunken brawl gone south to a maid literally convincing her mistress to hide in a wine barrel that she then set on fire, there are plenty of violent ways characters meet their demise. While there's the odd death in Bridgerton, not nearly as many bawdy bodies hit the floor as seen in The Decameron​​​​​​.

How Netflix's The Decameron Compares To The Source Material

Though The Decameron is based on the 14th-century short story book of the same name by Giovanni Boccaccio, it's an incredibly loose adaptation. Essentially, the Netflix series takes the book's basic premise — nobles retreating to a Tuscan villa to escape the Black Plague — and turns it into an anachronistic, irreverent romp.

Though there's plenty of raunchiness in the book, Boccaccio's The Decameron is framed around the stories the nobles tell each other to pass the time, whereas the show is more about the lethal power struggles and chaotic hijinks amongst the core group. The characters in the book are also all nobles, with The Decameron adaptation inventing several servant characters to add a level of upstairs-downstairs tension.

The names of the Netflix show's characters — Pampinea, Panfilo, Neifile, etc. — are borrowed from the book, but their personalities and dynamics are original creations for the series, with only the rebellious physician Dineo sharing any real traits with his literary counterpart.

However, the very end of Netflix's The Decameron consciously embraces and celebrates the themes of Boccaccio's short story collection. It's a startlingly heartfelt and earnest departure from the madcap antics that came before it, and the perfect conclusion to the most underrated period series on Netflix.