Review: Da Vinci's Demons

I have just finished re-watching Da Vinci's Demons for reasons I can't quite explain. It's not under any circumstances an objectively good show: the plots are too messy, the characters too static, the premise too bizarre for that. It never made that big of a splash online, as there was no fandom to speak of – and certainly not much publicity either.

And yet it managed a respectable three seasons (far better shows don't get so lucky) with a beginning, middle and end, and at times I found it truly fascinating – just as much for what it did wrong as it did right. I think I can most liken it to Salem: totally different in content and purpose, but also a three-season, below-the-radar genre show that was consistently entertaining and which I saw through to the end almost despite myself.

SPOILERS for all three seasons...

The show itself is difficult to describe, with about three strikingly different plots woven together and each cast member acting according to the storyline they're in, whether it be period drama, broad comedy, or action-adventure.

It's one-third highly (or utterly) fictionalized biography of Leonardo da Vinci in his youth, depicted as a blend of Tony Stark (if he was poor) and Sherlock Holmes (if he was an inventor), one-third The Da Vinci Code-inspired mystery involving an ancient conspiracy, esoteric symbols and a mystical artefact, and one-third historical drama that incorporates famous figures from the Renaissance (Lorenzo di Medici, Niccolò Machiavelli, Pope Sixtus IV) and certain events (the Pazzi Conspiracy, the Battle of Otrano).

Among other things, it also manages to include the Spear of Longinus, a voyage to Machu Picchu, astral projection, Lord Grantham in the buff, two secret cults, a Pope imposter, Count Dracula (or more accurately, Vlad Țepeș) and this dress:

It's bonkers.

Needless to say, the tone of the show is all over the place, not just because it constantly shifts from one genre (comedy, biopic, drama, horror, adventure, mystery) to another, but because the plot keeps moving its goalposts – not further back, but to another part of the field entirely.

The first season has a distinct formula: Leonardo is recruited by a mysterious Turk to find an artefact known as the Book of Leaves, said to contain incredible power and wisdom. He's not the only one after it: Girolamo Riario, an agent of Rome and right-hand man to Pope Sixtus IV also covets the Book, making it a battle of wits between the two men to interpret the clues strewn about Florence that might point them in the right direction.

Each episode also invariably involves Riario threatening Florence in some way (including poisoning a convent, mustering a mercenary army, laying charges of sodomy against Leonardo), and Leonardo thwarting him by use of some brilliant new invention.

Season two largely deals with Leonardo and Riario being forced to join forces if they want to retrieve the Book from a stone city on a brand new continent: Machu Picchu in South America. There the Book is said to reside in the Vault of Heaven, watched over by the Incan people (particularly the inevitable Chief's Beautiful Daughter) who themselves cannot access the place without Leonardo's help, it being guarded by several Indiana Jones-esque obstacles and death traps.

Finally, the third season deals with an abrupt change in direction: the Ottomans have invaded and conquered Otrano, armed with weapons of destruction that Leonardo himself created. Now he has to unite the city-states of Italy and come up with original designs that can turn the tide in their favour, which inevitably means aligning himself with Rome.

There are a dozen or so subplots woven throughout all of this: Leonardo develops feelings for Lucrezia Donati, Lorenzo di Medici's beautiful mistress who is also working (under duress) as Riario's spy. Pope Sixtus IV is actually an imposter; the real Pope's identical twin who has imprisoned his brother in the Vatican and seeks to impose his rule over all the city-states.

Lorenzo di Medici seeks out alliances and concocts strategies in order to keep Florence safe – first from the Pazzis and then from Rome and the Ottoman Empire – often butting heads with his loyal but neglected wife Clarice Orsini as he does so, and either helped or hindered by his younger brother Giuliano.

There are not one but two secret cults at work: The Sons of Mithras who end up less trustworthy than they first appear (eventually revealed to have a League of Assassins plot to provoke the Ottomans into attacking Italy and rebuilding civilisation from the ashes left in their wake) and the Labyrinth, which seems to be a precursor (or at least an allusion) to the Inquisition, whose aims and purpose are a little more opaque beyond wanting the Book of Leaves destroyed rather than read.

The third season also throws something of a murder mystery in just for good measure.

So yeah, a lot of stuff goes on here, but what struck me on my second viewing was how many of these stories die on the vine. Would you believe me if I said the first two seasons depicted Leonardo as consumed by his quest to find the Book of Leaves, only to drop it completely in the third? And that it's never actually found, even after going to all the trouble of establishing the place where it might be hidden?

I suppose there is some justification for this, with an episode-long dream sequence exploring a future in which Leonardo found and used the Book (it wasn't pleasant) and the use of one of its loose pages in finally defeating the Ottomans, but it's still a very strange creative decision. Imagine an Indiana Jones film in which he not only doesn't find the MacGuffin, but loses interest in it just when it's within his reach.

The search for the Book is also compounded by Leo's desire to find his missing mother, who ran away while he was just an infant – but though he eventually does cross paths with her, their reunion is strange and anti-climactic, and she's killed off soon afterwards with little fanfare.

A lot of time and effort is put into introducing the Labyrinth (also known as The Enemies of Man) but in hindsight, they contribute very little to the overarching plot, and are quickly replaced by the Ottoman Empire as the Big Bad of the series. I'm wracking my brains, but I honestly couldn't tell you what this organization is even trying to achieve.

The saga of the Cain and Abel Popes is equally unimportant: the deception is never revealed to the public, and one brother becomes a case of What Happened to the Mouse after he disappears entirely in the final episode.

Some things do work well, or at least – not badly. Within each separate season the plotting is fairly tight, and several seeds that are sown early are eventually paid off (for instance, Leo's strange experience as a child of wandering into a cave near his house and discovering a hanged man dangling from the roof). Most importantly, there is a satisfying resolution that ends all our characters' arcs on a bittersweet but appropriately open note.

Let's say the show is a complete tapestry, but one with a rather messy pattern.

***

The cast is uniformly solid, though not spectacular. To be fair, they're not exactly helped by lacklustre introductory scenes (none of them are going to end up on TV Tropes' Character Establishing Moment page, as they do very little to ascertain personalities or motivations – a few just involve relaying exposition or silently walking by) and their characterizations remain surprisingly stagnant across the three seasons. I can't think of a single one that goes through any profound development, and though that's not a deal-breaker it's still a rather odd omission in a serial.  

Tom Riley successfully sells Leonardo as a genius savant, but not one charismatic enough to secure the undying loyalty of so many friends (his posse is the best part of the show) and with an irritating habit of waving his fingers about to indicate his quicksilver thought-process. I get the need for a visual cue that a character is "thinking hard", but it gets annoying after a while.

To get a gist of how absurd this show could be, we can count the following among his inventions and discoveries: parachutes, submarines, blood transfusions, scuba diving gear, South America, criminal psychology, and the fact that the planets orbit the sun, all accompanied by a Sherlock-esque technique of sketches, diagrams and blueprints superimposed over whatever project he's working on. With all this in mind, it's a little funny that Leonardo adheres so fiercely to the "magic is just science people don't understand yet" line of thinking, since none of his inventions cater to any conceivable rules of physics.

Riley's performance is rather overshadowed by Blake Ritson as Girolamo Riario, whose slow, low, overly-articulate speech patterns actually work in the character's favour (he seems to bite every word he says) though he's often too intense for the material he's given. By the time he was running through a cornfield in Machu Picchu, screaming his primal anguish to the rain while covered in a mixture of blood and war paint, I was laughing so hard there were tears running down my cheeks.

As you often find with Anti-Heroes, the writers can't seem to decide whether he's a tortured soul or a conscienceless madman: in one episode he'll casually slit the throat of an innocent bystander who's seen too much, in the next he'll be taking flowers to his dead mother's grave.

Ultimately he comes across as a bit of a tool, hitching his wagon to whatever powerful figure is closest – whether it be Pope Sixtus, Leonardo, or the leader of the Labyrinth. If there's a redemption arc here, it'll be seen only by the very determined fan-girl.

Laura Haddock (now perhaps best known as Peter Quill's mother) is given the thankless role of Love Interest and Femme Fatale, forced into a wholly unconvincing "love" story with Leonardo without even the dignity of a slow burn – they're screwing by the end of the very first episode.

What little fandom there was treated her like shit, which isn't surprising since she double-crosses three white male protagonists and constantly uses her sex appeal to achieve her goals. And I've noticed that whenever a show relentlessly refers to a female character in derogatory terms, fandom is more than happy to follow suit – in this case, there was no end to male characters that treat Lucrezia with misogynistic contempt.

Finally there was Elliot Cowan as Lorenzo di Medici, who on second viewing, is revealed to be quite the dickhead. He treats his wife and brother like shit, trusts all the wrong people, ignores wise council, sentences an innocent man to death, brutally murders a councilman that challenges him, and at different points puts his hands around both his wife and his mistress's throats.

None of this is bad characterization, except that the show constantly tries to sell him as an even-tempered leader, diplomat and self-proclaimed humanist who deserves the "Magnifico" moniker. That, he does demonstrably not.

These four comprise the main cast of the show, though the real joy is to be found in what can only be called Leonardo's posse: Zoraster (Gregg Chillin), Nicco (Eros Vlahos), Vanessa (Hera Hilmar) and Andrea Verrocchio (Allan Corduner). Zoraster is best described as Leo's "gofer", acquiring everything from transportation to fresh cadavers, and who embodies the Trickster Archetype given his con-artistry and gift of the gab.

Nicco is eventually (though anti-climactically) revealed as a young Niccolò Machiavelli, and suffers the most from the aforementioned lack of development in the show's characters. You'd think there'd be a careful graduation of Nicco from a callow youth to the manipulative mastermind who authored The Prince, but aside from a few scenes in which he picks up tips on deviousness from those around him, the show bewilderingly doesn't conclude with the character pulling off some sort of magnificently grand scheme to secure a victory.

On the other hand, Vanessa Moschella probably does walk away with the best character arc – she reminds me of Guinevere from Merlin in that she has a very low-key but satisfying journey from obscurity to power. In her case, she goes from an artist's model and barmaid to the mother of Giuliano di Medici's bastard son and (in the absence of the rest of the family) the de-facto ruler of Florence.

Finally, Andrea Verrocchio is Leonardo's maestro and studio overseer, who meets the same fate of all venerable mentors everywhere – but not before being a kindly father figure to all of the above characters.

Amongst this colourfully drawn quartet, it's strange to consider that the show's protagonist, who is Leonardo da Vinci, is somehow less interesting and appealing than his immediate circle of friends.

There are plenty of supporting characters too: Tom Bateman is probably the standout as Giuliano de Medici, playing the character as the barely-restrained younger brother of Lorenzo, all crazy-eyes and hair-trigger temper. He always seems on the verge of an explosion, yet retains his undeniable charisma – not a guy you'd want to date, but certainly a lot of fun to watch.

Then there's Lara Pulver as Lorenzo's wife Clarice Orsini, who the writers never seem quite sure what to do with. I'll have more to say later, but they had some interesting ideas about depicting a woman who was acutely self-aware of her role as "the good wife", only to fail in giving her anything interesting to actually do.

James Faulker pulls double-duty as the two Popes, roles that require him to be as odious as possible, David Schofield is Leo's disapproving father Piero da Vinci, and good old reliable Alexander Siddig fills a largely thankless role as the mysterious leader of the Sons of Mithras and Exposition Guy.

And I can't go without mentioning Paul Rhys as Vlad Țepeș. He only appeared in four episodes, and yet he's entertaining enough to justify watching the whole show. Seriously. Although there are plenty of allusions to Dracula (including his seeming immortality) the show skews closer to an accurate portrayal of the historical Prince of Wallachia, including his time as a hostage to the Ottoman Empire.

But the performance itself has to be seen to be believed. Somehow pulling off comedic timing while maintaining an air of menace, Rhys also throws in serious psychological problems, a preening sense of superiority, and the most hilarious: "who, me?" face whenever he does something particularly over-the-top.

***

There are two consistent themes throughout the show, though neither one is explored in any great depth. The first is that of Florence (progression and hedonism) versus Rome (religious hypocrisy and stagnation) which is straightforward enough, though takes an interesting turn in the third season when Florence point-blank refuses to join Rome's crusade against an invading Ottoman army.

It's the exact opposite of the usual Enemy Mine development you usually see in these sorts of stories, with two adversaries uniting to fight a common enemy, and the show leaves it up in the air as to whether or not it was the right call to make. Muddying the waters further is that Leonardo himself aligns with two morally ambiguous characters (a sadistic pope-imposter and a crazed devil worshipper) in order to fight the Ottomans, a dilemma which could have been fascinating but which is so rife with unfortunate implications that perhaps we should be thankful the writers weren't interested in exploring it.  

The second overt theme is one that was similarly mishandled in Sherlock: establishing Leonardo as an eccentric genius who needs to better appreciate ordinary people (especially his friends) only for the show to never follow through on this logical character development.

His Character Establishing Moment is strapping Nicco to a flying machine that nearly gets him killed, and in his excitement over new ideas and inventions, Leo is utterly careless with the safety of himself and others. You know the drill: his genius is so great he can't socialize properly; a hyper-intelligent savant to whom people are tools, toys, or obstacles to his ingenuity that have to be removed.

Although he's occasionally called out on this, it never evolves into anything more. There never comes a scene in which he's forced to change his ways, chose between a friend and a discovery, or even realize to any lasting degree that his behaviour is harmful to others. If anything, it's his constantly-endangered friends that must learn to accept him, especially when the writers start plying on the standard "only I can save the world, what a heavy burden, won't someone appreciate all my suffering?" angle.

***

But Da Vinci's Demons has some deeper problems – and to be fair, they're the problems all genre shows have to some extent...

First of all, can we all agree the real Leonardo da Vinci was gay? There's always room for debate, but a look at the evidence certainly points in that direction and the show itself works in his historical arrest on charges of sodomy. Leonardo himself never denies the charge (using another whacky invention to blackmail the judge into dropping the case) and dialogue with the male artist's model who accuses him makes it clear they did have a sexual encounter at some point.

Sounds good, right? Except the only scene between Leonardo and his former lover is a goodbye scene, in which Leo gently but firmly lets him down, which is immediately followed by a sex scene with Lucrezia. It's hard not to think that the writers felt the need to hat-tip the real Leonardo's preference for men, only to veer hard back into heterosexuality so as not to freak out any viewers.

Leonardo's bisexuality is never brought up again, there are never any same-sex love scenes (in contrast to the plethora of male/female ones) and a vision of an alternate future has Leonardo married to Lucrezia with a young son. It's a disappointing creative decision, especially from STARZ which gave us positive LGBT representation in both Spartacus and Black Sails. Why the cold feet here?

Then there's its treatment of POC. Across the three seasons, there are three significant black characters – one is evil, one is a mentor, one is a servant to a white nobleman, and all of them end up dead. That last one in particular is just infuriating: a textbook example of what not to do with black female characters. Zita is slavishly devoted to Riario (sleeping with him, calling him "master" and insisting that there's good in him), to the point where she willingly allows him to stab her to death so he can complete his quest for an object he never even finds.

Oh honey, no.

Totally subservient to Riario's designs, even her appearance in the afterlife has her implore Leonardo to tell Riario that she forgives him. And naturally, she's barely mentioned again after her death.

Then there's Yana, a girl who is captured as a slave and raped by Alfonso of Naples after she procures a knife and tries to use it against her captors. Rape is the go-to method of establishing a villain as truly despicable, but most shows/films either portray the rape without nudity (Vikings) or have the rape itself occur off-screen (Game of Thrones). Not here.

Afterwards Yana gets to scratch the word "toy" onto Alfonso's chest as an echo of what he called her earlier, and with that the writers seem to think the issue is resolved. As the Nostalgia Chick once said: "it's like the rape never happened!" An episode later Yana is glimpsed walking the shores of South America, and is never seen again.

There are plenty other irritating things – from the shaved legs and coconut bras of the Machu Picchu women to the bizarre sex scenes in which the women are required to go fully nude while the men inexplicably manage to keep their pants on, but when it comes to Zita and Yara, there's plenty of overlap with the show's general treatment of its female characters – and it made me realize something I've been noticing in plenty of genre shows and films lately.

The thing is, it's not that women are badly written anymore. Even the most tone-deaf writer knows the fundamentals of how a main female character should be handled: that she must have a personality, a skill-set, a clear sense of agency and motivation, and some on-the-nose dialogue that expresses dissatisfaction with the injustices imposed on her. If there's a chance of passing the Bechdel Test, a display of female solidarity is also a must-have. Even this show knew that Clarice and Lucrezia (Lorenzo's wife and mistress respectively) were more interesting if they communicated with each other rather engaging in a jealous cat-fight.

It's not the women themselves that are the problem – it's that they're still constantly at war with the tropes around them; the narrative arcs that the writers just can't overcome. Even as a woman verbally expresses her thoughts and desires, demonstrates a quick mind or the ability to physically defend herself, plays the role of senator or spy or warrior, at some point she'll still be forced into the role of distressed damsel, or rape victim, or the fridge. Writers simply cannot imagine a story without these devices.

This is why you still get so many female characters who say: "I don't need any help" or "I can look after myself" seconds before she needs rescuing from mortal danger. We’ve moved from boring women stuck in boring roles to interesting women stuck in boring roles (a good example is Jane in The Legend of Tarzan: wonderfully spunky, intelligent, defiant and spirited, but is the plot-required damsel in distress from start to finish).

It's this odd compromise where the likes of Sansa, Veil, Clarice and others are written as interesting and complex women, but simply cannot break free of the same old story beats: assault, rape, nudity, distress, imprisonment, death.

To be fair, Da Vinci's Demons does right the ship a little in its final season. Vanessa gets a strong arc that (despite involving power falling into her hands through male channels, first as the mother of Giuliano's son, then as Lorenzo's consort) allows her to follow her raw ambition without judgement or punishment, and the addition of three new female characters (Laura Cereta, Madame Singh and Sophia da Vinci) are handled well.

But the death of Clarice and the treatment of Lucrezia leave a bad aftertaste. The former is disrespected at every turn (even as the writers try to sell her as a shrewd ruler who embraces her subservient role), humiliated by Lorenzo's cheating (even as he pays lip-service to her loyalty), and ultimately punished for her own adultery when her lover turns out to be a spy (though the writers insist that she's the beloved Mother of Florence).

When she finally strikes out on her own and attempts to hunt down the man who betrayed her, nothing but the fridge awaits her. As for Lucrezia, I didn't mind her heroic death so much, but again the writers try to have their cake and eat it too: for much of the first season she's under duress to act as Lorenzo's mistress in order to gather information on him. Though this certainly allows her character some inner conflict, it also gives showrunners the excuse to get her naked as much as possible.

Like I said: interesting women pummelled by tropes that hate them.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Of all the things a show could start with, this one begins with a naked Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) pissing into a pot. Also keep an eye out for Jack Farthing (Warleggan in Poldark) as Botticelli!

Some of the South American scenes are clearly shot in the Forest of Dean, which all Merlin fans will recognize instantly.

The show tries and fails to sell Leonardo/Lucrezia as a great love story, but the interactions between Lucrezia and Zoroaster are far more entertaining. On facing execution together, he turns to her and says: "I'm sorry we never fucked." Somehow the delivery is both hilarious and heart-warming.

For the record, the Mona Lisa is featured in the show, but not to any great extent, and its inclusion seems to be based on the assumption that you simply cannot have a show about Leonardo da Vinci and not reference his most famous work.

One of the more amusing promotional pics.

Your eyes will be most offended by the hideous CGI cityscapes of Florence, especially in the first few episodes, so brace yourself. That a show which has the protection of Florence as its major theme couldn't splurge a little on its on-screen depiction is a little surprising.

There's an interesting backstory concerning Leonardo's mother that sadly never gets explored: apparently she left Leonardo's father to go with Carlo de Medici to find the Book of Leaves in South America, only to be betrayed, leave behind a robotic head with a secret message for her son to find, and take the Book to a new hiding place in Constantinople. Then she has a child with Al Rahim, leaves said child in a convent, and ends up as a soothsayer for the firstborn prince of the Ottoman Empire after she refuses to hand over her children (the only ones who can read the Book for reasons that are never explained) to the Sons of Mithras. I mean, damn. You have to piece most of this together from throwaway lines of dialogue and slivers of flashbacks, so where's her spin-off?

It's rather amusing to compare this show with The Borgias, whose air-dates overlapped Da Vinci's Demons by one year (2013). Both involve a bluff with a giant weapon that doesn't actually function, Machiavelli as a supporting character at different stages of his life, and a thoroughly loathsome depiction of Prince Alfonso of Naples. Yet no Borgias ever appear in Da Vinci's Demons, and da Vinci never shows up on The Borgias (though if memory serves, his art studio does).

But amusingly enough, Paul Rhys (who here plays Vlad Țepeș) played Leonard da Vinci in Borgia, that other costume drama that aired in 2013 – 2014.

If you decide to watch, keep your eyes open when Leo visits the Vatican archives: among the other artefacts is the Sword in the Stone and the Spear of Longinus. And really, it's this level of insane silliness that makes the show worth at least one watch.

Despite being comprised of bits and pieces cobbled together from The Borgias, The Da Vinci Code, Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, Da Vinci's Demons was unique. It marched to the beat of its own drum, even when its rhythm was erratic. It's not something I can wholeheartedly recommend, and this review was written partly so I could sort out my own feelings about it, so here it is: a show that couldn't decide what it wanted to be, and so tried to be a little bit of everything. In many ways, it managed to pull it off.