The Decameron

Unless you did English A-level and shoehorned a mention of it into your Chaucer paper to try to get extra marks, you probably haven’t even heard of Boccaccio’s The Decameron, let alone read it. Which no doubt partly explains Netflix’s decision to give it the Bridgerton treatment: no one, anywhere, is liable to complain about their most cherished classic being massacred. I had to look up who was responsible for this atrocity of a show, so I could check who to hate But massacred it has been. Just as Bridgerton drives a coach and horses – or bulldozer with flashing rave lights and klaxons, more like – through anything that