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| - Having had such a big success with The Tudors, Showtime has continued the theme of sexy period drama by turning to another turbulent period of history, and another notorious family. Stage left; enter the Borgias. The Borgias, or at least this particular branch of the family, have become a byword for corruption and decadence. It doesn't help that the head of the family, Rodrigo, is often believed to have bought his way into the papacy. Or that he had a string of mistresses well into his sixties, despite the fact that he was, you know, a cardinal and then Pope. Or that he installed at least one of them in the Vatican itself. Or that he also had at least four acknowledged children, again despite the cardinal and Pope schtick. Or that one of his sons, Cesare, was a Magnificent Bastard in every sense of the word. Or that his daughter, Lucrezia, has something of a reputation as a poisoner and a femme fatale. Or that one of her husbands accused her of committing incest with her father and brother. Or that Cesare is rumored to have killed his brother, Giovanni, and either murdered or ordered the murder of his sister's second husband. Or that... Well, you get the picture. Let's not even start on 'The Banquet of the Chestnuts'. To be fair, the Borgias had many enemies and some of the stuff written about them was quite possibly exaggerated or expanded upon to demonize them. This does not, however, mean that they were nice people, even by the standards of the time; they weren't. Considering the world they lived in, they couldn't afford to be. All this is portrayed in the series and then some. Jeremy Irons has top billing as Pope Alexander VI, and the series debuted in April 2011. It has garnered some of the highest ratings on Showtime, and was renewed for a second, and then a third season. Not to be confused with a 1980 series, also called The Borgias, which was produced by The BBC. For reasons way too long to go into here, the BBC's version was a total flop and a temporary Genre Killer for the BBC Costume Drama. Not to be confused either with Borgia the European 2011 version produced by Canal+ and created by Tom Fontana from Oz.
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