Matcollis
This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.
Joanna Mccarty
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
lwgoodrich
I absolutely loved this, and cannot wait for the second season to become available. The Medicis, an incredibly wealthy banking family, were a powerful influence in Florence for literally centuries. Season One showcases the first three generations from the late 1300s to the early 1400s, as the family was beginning to build its wealth. Unsurprisingly, the Florentine nobility tended to look down their noses at these non-royal upstarts, who had managed to become part of the city's governing body.Dustin Hoffman appears as the first Medici banker, who has worked his way up from a hardscrabble existence into the banking business - and is ruthless about continuing to build it through his family. In fact, no holds are barred by anyone in this story when it comes to gaining power - including the nobility. There is betrayal, treachery, murder - in other words, it's wildly entertaining, without overdoing the gore.Once Giovanni has gone to his reward (or punishment), his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo take over, and Cosimo's son Piero is groomed for leadership as well. But the women - oh, the Medici women! They are as strong and ambitious as their spouses, and seem like they'd be equally capable of handling the business and the competition. One of the great pleasures of this series is the location (I suspect some of it was filmed in Sienna as well as Florence), which gives a fabulous sense of the medieval time and place, both outdoors and in the spare yet beautiful interiors where much of the wealth is displayed through artwork. Hopefully this series will go on for a long time - after all, the Medici family remained influential for several centuries!
bendyfurr
A better title would have been "A Fictional Account of 16th Century Florence Involving The Medici" with a caveat that no one portrayed in this series actually resembles anyone who lived.SPOILERI was willing to overlook the total exclusion of one of the Medici boys, the made up loves and murders, the overly pretty appearance of the characters in the name of Hollywood, however, completely changing the death of Lorenzo and making it a paltry low handed death is unforgivable. The real lives of the Medici were full of drama and there was no need to give Lorenzo that treatment. What of the real assassination attempt in the church? Surely the writers could have had used that actual event to their advantage. After such a fantastical episode and total ruining of Lorenzo's character I can't be bothered to watch anymore.
sabsemade-09829
If you want to watch a show with nice landscape shots and a fairy OK story, then this show is perfectly fine. If you care about the history of the time, details in continuity, fitting music for the scenes and really well cast actors, you should look somewhere else. While Dustin Hoffman does a fine job and I wanted to see more of him, Richard Madden seemed a little dull in comparison. He plays, after all, the lead character. I don't say he's bad, but the difference between the old and young version is sometimes non- existing, and a little bit of gray colour in his hair won't change that. Also, as a person with another first language than English, especially the names were hard to understand in the beginning and I was very confused about who was who. The women's parts seem a bit one-dimensional. The music is great, but I felt like it was sometimes too much for the scenes, and therefore drowning instead of highlighting them. Also, the time period could have been portrayed better, not everyone back then was in perfect shape, had clear skin and pearly teeth and no posture problems. While watching the first few episodes, I only kept watching because I wanted to finish the series, but at times it was very slow paced. The story seemed a little anti-climactic. All in all it's not bad, but if you want a lot of details, you'll be a little disappointed.
robertguttman
It seems to be fashionable nowadays to depict previous eras as drab and grungy. In this instance the milieu in question is Renaissance Italy. Upon viewing this series, one cannot help but wonder if the producers ever bothered to do any research whatsoever. Even the most superficial examination of 15th Century Italian art would reveal that Italians of that era were anything but drab, dirty and unkept, especially those possessed of any degree of wealth and power. Renaissance Italy was literally one of the most colorful periods of European history. Yet all the characters in "Medici" dress in drab garments of black, brown or dark blue, and are usually depicted as scraggly and unkempt, as if they did not have valets to make sure they were well turned out. Even Cardinals in the Vatican are depicted dressed in black, and even the Vatican itself is depicted as drab and colorless. To make matters worse, the series was filmed using a process that subdues all the colors, as if the producers deliberately intended to render 15th Century Florence even more drab.In that respect one might wish to contrast this series with the 1949 film "Prince of Foxes", which was set in roughly the same locale and era. While a Hollywood production, "Prince of Foxes" was actually filmed in Italy with the assistance of Italian film makers. Even though it was filmed in black-and-white, the costumes and settings in "Prince of Foxes" provide a far more authentic depiction of just how colorful Renaissance Italy actually was.
