'The New Pope': TV Review

Jan 07, 2020 829

BY: Daniel D'Addario

Three years ago, Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Young Pope” crash-landed onto American airwaves. The Italian auteur’s series, which envisioned a sharp-tongued New Yorker bringing the Holy See to heel, was so surreal that it tended to elicit responses of confusion and revulsion from mainstream observers, but for those on its wavelength, it was both an aptly-timed portrait of an egomaniac granted the powers of state and a visual feast with all the ornate peculiarity of its subject, institutional Catholicism.

It also ended, and definitively enough; while the story of “The Young Pope” left a few mysteries to be solved — well, so too did the Bible. One must have faith and continue the story on one’s own in the church pew, but TV, lately, can be counted on to give more of what one wants than is really needed. In that tradition comes “The New Pope,” a sequel series that apes, unsuccessfully, what was so special about the first’s achievement.

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SOURCE: https://nationalpost.com/

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