The Black Death Sparks Bacchanalian Excess In 'The Decameron' Trailer

“The pestilence has cast a strange spell on us all,” a partygoer insists in the trailer for Netflix's upcoming historical dramedy The Decameron, and if it weren't immediately obvious that this show is set in medieval Italy, you might wonder if it were actually set in our present-day instead. The vibes, as the kids say, are certainly right.

A soapy dark comedy-drama, The Decameron follows the story of a group of rich, pretty, mostly young people invited to a lush villa in the countryside to hide out and escape the deadly plague that's ravaging Florence. The group sets out to do little more than eat, drink, and be merry. But as social rules among the group wear thin, chaos ensues, and it's suddenly everyone for themselves, in every sense of the word. Does the threat of imminent death bring out the best or the worst in humanity? Or simply expose our true selves?

The eight-part series is very loosely inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century collection of tales, which is also called The Decameron. The hundred short stories are told by a group of young people --- seven women and three men --- over ten days while sheltering together in a villa while the Black Death raged nearby. The tales include everything from tragic love stories and moral life lessons to witty jokes and bawdy sexual encounters, often satirizing familiar medieval storytelling methods such as allegory and basing many of their characters on real people.