Paolo Sorrentino built a pope who hides his face and takes the Church’s money. The Young Pope ran for one season and 10 episodes on Sky Atlantic, from 21 October to 18 November 2016, and it turned the Vatican into a stage for a man who refuses to be seen.
Trailer, via Sky TV.
Lenny Belardo, the Compromise Candidate
The premise is a joke the cardinals tell on themselves. Lenny Belardo, a young cardinal from New York City, becomes pope when the leading contenders of the papal conclave fail to win election. He is installed as a compromise candidate. He takes the name Pius XIII and immediately goes to work against the institution that made him.
Jude Law plays Belardo. The role asks him to be charming and cold in the same breath, and he manages it. His first acts are not reforms but provocations. He decrees that common people are not worthy to gaze upon the pope’s face. He appears on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica shrouded in darkness.
That image is the series in miniature. A man with absolute authority chooses to be seen as an absence. Sorrentino created and directed the series for Sky Atlantic, HBO and Canal+, with Wildside, Haut et Court TV and Mediapro co-producing.
Sister Mary and the War in the Secretariat
The cardinals do not take the provocation quietly. Several senior cardinals begin a plan to control the pope and dissuade him from more ideas dangerous to the Church. Belardo answers by installing Sister Mary, the nun who raised him in an orphanage, as his chief adviser.
Diane Keaton plays Sister Mary. She is the pope’s confidante, and the show treats her as the one relationship he cannot manage like a policy. Silvio Orlando plays Cardinal Voiello, the Secretary of State who becomes the pope’s most persistent opponent.
The power struggle has a bureaucratic texture that most Vatican fiction skips. Belardo tells the Cardinal Secretary of State he will now become directly involved in the political affairs of the Vatican, effectively assuming control of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. He publicly denounces several cardinals. He threatens to confiscate all the property of various religious orders, in particular the Franciscans, if they do not accept his unquestioned leadership.
The Papal Tiara of Pope Paul VI
Then comes the detail that tells you what kind of show this is. Belardo directs that the papal tiara of Pope Paul VI be removed from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. and returned to the Vatican as his personal crown.
The cardinals make a last-ditch effort. They arrange a meeting between the pope and the prime minister of Italy. Belardo bullies him and threatens an archaic papal procedure allowing the Church to direct Italian Catholics not to vote in general elections.
The supporting cast is deep. Javier Cámara plays Cardinal Gutierrez. Scott Shepherd plays Cardinal Dussolier. Cécile de France plays Sofia Dubois. Ludivine Sagnier plays Esther Aubry. Toni Bertorelli plays Cardinal Caltanissetta. James Cromwell plays Cardinal Michael Spencer.
A Venice Premiere and an Emmy First
The Young Pope premiered on television on 21 October 2016 on Sky Atlantic in Italy. Its world premiere came earlier, on 3 September 2016 at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival, where the first two episodes screened out of competition. It was the first time in the history of the festival that a TV series was part of the program.
The run was short and fixed. One season, 10 episodes, first aired 21 October 2016, last aired 18 November 2016.
| Episode run | Date |
|---|---|
| World premiere, 73rd Venice International Film Festival | 3 September 2016 |
| Television premiere, Sky Atlantic Italy | 21 October 2016 |
| Season finale | 18 November 2016 |
It was originally designed as a limited series and marketed as such, especially in the United States. It did not stay limited. The New Pope followed, with Law returning and joined by John Malkovich. Production began in Italy in late 2018.
On 14 July 2017, The Young Pope received two nominations for the 69th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. It became the first Italian TV series to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
The published critical score is 8.0/10, with an 80% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
What the Show Gets Right
The Young Pope works because it refuses the two easy versions of this story. It is not a scandal procedural and it is not a saint’s life. It is a satire about a man who understands that the papacy is a performance and decides to perform menace.
The satire lands hardest where the show is most concrete. The tiara pulled out of a Washington basilica and flown home as a personal crown carries more weight than any speech about faith. The threatened ban on Catholic voting in Italian elections is a reminder that the Church’s real power was always structural, not spiritual.
Sorrentino’s cast is the reason the scheme holds. Keaton gives Sister Mary a stillness that makes the pope’s theatrics look childish. Orlando’s Voiello is the show’s most fully drawn figure: a man who believes in the institution and has to decide, episode by episode, how much of it he will trade to save it.
The weaknesses are real. Ten episodes is a long time to sustain a single joke about a pope who will not show his face, and the middle stretch leans on repetition. The show also loves its own imagery more than it loves its arguments, which is a Sorrentino habit and not always a virtue here.
But the ambition is the point. This is a series that put a TV show into the Venice Film Festival program for the first time and then put an Italian series into the Primetime Emmys for the first time. Both facts say something about how the industry changed around it. The show itself says something narrower and better: that absolute authority is a costume, and the man wearing it gets to choose how much of himself to show.
The Young Pope is not a perfect season. It is a distinctive one, and the distinction is Law’s performance and Sorrentino’s refusal to soften the character into someone the audience can like. Belardo is petty, brilliant and dangerous, and the show never asks us to forgive him.
That is worth 8 of 10.
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