Borgia - Season 1 - Released on DVD & Blu-ray on November 17

Canal+ issued a press release indicating Borgia will premiere on October 10th at 9pm (2 episodes back-to-back each Monday for 6 weeks), and the DVD/Blu-ray discs of the show will be available 3 days after the season finale aired :

- Episodes 1.01 / 1.02 (October 10) : 1492 / Ondata di calore.
- Episodes 1.03 / 1.04 (October 17) : A Sacred Vow / Wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
- Episodes 1.05 / 1.06 (October 24) : The Bonds of Matrimony / Legitimacy.
- Episodes 1.07 / 1.08 (October 31) : Maneuvers / Prelude to an Apocalypse.
- Episodes 1.09 / 1.10 (November 7) : The Invasion of Rome / Miracles.
- Episodes 1.11 / 1.12 (November 14) : God's Monster / The Serpent Rises.
- DVD & Blu-ray release (November 17) : All 12 episodes on 3 discs (DVD : 25€ ; Blu-ray : 33€).

So basically, if you don't have a subscription to Canal+ (which I assume is the case for most of you), you will nonetheless be able to watch the show in impeccable conditions in 9 weeks.


By the way, the show cost 25 million euros (34.1 million dollars). That's almost 3 millions $/episode, which is equivalent to most big network dramas. Production was outsourced in Czech Republic, so they saved a certain amount of money on the workforce, and perhaps were able to inject more money into the set or costumes.

I don't think we have anything to worry about on the visual aspect of Borgia : the first 2 episodes were screened last week at the Deauville festival (which so far didn't include TV shows, but this year they started screening series as well with the first episodes of The Chicago Code, Justified and Borgia - Shawn Ryan, Graham Yost and Tom Fontana were all there). And the first critics are very positive, reviewers are especially impressed by how beautiful it looks. Apparently the pace is slow but that's not a problem at all, sometimes it's very grandiloquent and some other times it's very intimistic. The writers are not spoon-feeding us, the viewers have to pay attention. And the critics also confirm what was obvious : it is dark, violent, very mature and morally ambiguous.

5000 extras were used in the background throughout all 12 episodes, 391 people worked all day long on the show and 157 liters (41.53 gallons) of (fake) blood were produced. That's one bloody show.

Aside from Borgia, since I'm here and this thread is nice (also I don't think it'll interest many people so there's no need for a new thread), I'll just say a few words on another Canal+ show : Platane. The show premiered last Monday with the first 3 episodes (32 minutes each).



Platane garnered universal critical acclaim in the press : witty, bold, burlesque, zany, all these adjectives are used to describe this show. In various interviews, Eric Judor refers to Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Ricky Gervais and Pierre Richard as his models.

Platane revolves around Eric Judor as himself (an exagerated version of himself, like Larry in Curb your Enthusiasm) finding himself in very awkward and embarassing situations, basically. Eric (creator, producer, star of the show) is in self-demeaning mode most of the time. I watched the first episode : I loved it, filled with dark humor, I'll watch the next two episodes this week-end. If you like Extras or Episodes, this is for you.

All 12 episodes follow Eric as he tries to make a serious movie (Eric is labelled as a comedy guy only). And not just any movie, La Môme 2.0 Next Generation. Yeah. No one believes in him (I wonder why) but he'll go for it to prove to himself and to the world that he can do something by himself (he's always worked alongside his buddy Ramzy, who ended up having a very successful solo career when Eric hit a platanus and went into a coma for a year).

Eric Judor is a lot smarter than some of his features movies tended to let us know (he's done a few good movies but most of them had mixed reviews), he's very aware of the critics that have been made to him in the past (being able to display only goofy, childish humor for instance) and since he's playing himself, he subtly tackes them in the show (e.g : people may him as a buffoon, that can be a problem sometimes).

Eric is already planning the writing of a potential 2nd season, if Canal+ chooses to pick it up. The ratings have been great : around 1 million viewers for the first episode and an average of more than 800 000 viewers for all 3 episodes.

I've talked about both Borgia and Platane in previous threads, you can check the Canal+ label and find them if you want.