After the bed-hopping Borgias and the head-chopping Tudors, it is now the turn of another Renaissance dynasty, the Medicis, to get the television series treatment.
The Florentine family, which spawned no fewer than three popes and two queens of France, has now got its own period drama, starring Dustin Hoffman.
The Hollywood star plays Giovanni de’ Medici, the patriarch of the banking family, who, like many in the clan, came to a nasty end. His charismatic son, Cosimo, is played by the Game of Thrones actor Richard Madden.
The first of the Medici drama’s 50-minute episodes are being premiered as part of the official selection at the MIPTV festival in Cannes, France, which runs until Thursday.
While sexual intrigue and power were driving forces for the Borgias and the Tudors, the series producers say money was what made the Florentine family tick.
“The Medici came to power at a time of great social and economic inequality,” said writer Frank Spotnitz, one of the key figures behind The X-Files. “They were great disrupters. Their banking practices led to the creation of a middle class, making them unimaginably wealthy.”
Spotnitz said the family used that wealth to challenge traditional thinking as arguably the greatest patrons of the arts of their age, commissioning work from Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
He added that the Medicis ushered in a new era of revolutionary art and science such as the world had never seen. It is a powerful story that resonates even now.”
A second series has already been commissioned from Italy’s Lux Vide and Britain’s Big Light Productions, with the first to air in Italy at the end of the year. But despite its star power, Medici: Master of Florence was beaten to the inaugural Coup de Coeur award on Sunday in Cannes by Public Enemy.
The Belgian drama tells the story of a reviled child killer who is released on parole to live in a monastery only for a young girl to soon go missing.
Over 10 one-hour episodes, Public Enemy “questions what we do with people we consider monsters”, according to its makers Playtime Films and Entre Chien et Loup.
Four other dark or dystopian dramas were among the remaining 10 high-end series selected for the competition that was dominated by European productions.
Bordertown follows a serial killer on the Russian-Finnish border, while Britain’s ITV took inspiration for The Secret from a real-life “perfect murder” case in which two lovers got away with killing their partners so they could be together until the burden of guilt led one to confess.
Only after one of the churchgoing Northern Irish pair, played by James Nesbitt, is hit by a series of disasters which he considers to be God’s vengeance, does the truth come out.
ITV also hopes to find a more family friendly audiences for its eight-part costume drama Victoria, which follows in the train of the 2009 film The Young Victoria, portraying the early life of the British monarch until her marriage to Prince Albert.