Style and substance combine in mesmerising historical drama The Leopard

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It’s impossible to overstate the impact that fiction can have on the mythology of a nation. What would our understanding of British history look like, were it not for the record Shakespeare left of our late medieval kings? How would we think of the French Revolution without Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables or the American Civil War without Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage? These works record history, but they also shape it – and that role is played, in the great unified nation of Italy, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 novel The Leopard, which arrives on our screens this week as a lavish Netflix miniseries.

Italy, in the second half of the 19th century, is on the brink of binding together its disparate nations, under the stewardship of General Garibaldi. Sicily, the island being kicked by the boot of the peninsula, has long been its own master, and is governed, internally, by its aristocracy, not least Don Fabrizio (Kim Rossi Stuart), Prince of Salina, known to all as The Leopard. But his standing in Palermo is unsettled by the arrival of Garibaldi’s “red shirts”, not least when his feckless but beloved nephew Tancredi (Saul Nanni) enlists with the rebels. As Sicily falls under the spell of the nationalists, undertaking a project known as the Risorgimento, from the Italian for “resurgence”, the way of life long enjoyed by the Salina dynasty is threatened.

This is the grand question of The Leopard and one that is well suited to our times. At moments of great change, should we adapt and accept our new station, or fight for the world we have always known? The novel’s author was himself a Prince of Lampedusa whose own bloodline had declined under the Risorgimento, and his own peerage, established in the 1660s, would survive only a few years after his death. “Sicily is no longer just an island”, Tancredi tells the Leopard’s lovestruck daughter Concetta (Benedetta Porcaroli), “but part of a nation.” Of course, as with all great, sweeping historical novels – from War and Peace to Gone with the Wind – The Leopard also finds time for romance amidst the violence. Tancredi eschews the wide-eyed Concetta in favour of Angelica, the glamorous daughter of a village mayor, played by Monica Bellucci’s daughter, Deva Cassel.

For all the variety of its international library, it's rare for Netflix to put so much faith (and money) into a non-English language series, but having triumphed recently with shows like Squid Game and Lupin, it is the turn of Italian to receive the streamer’s euros. And the show is beautifully made: the locations and costumes are sumptuous, the attention to period detail immaculate. This is a period drama on a scale rarely seen on TV, more akin to the expenditure on The Crown than terrestrial dramas like Wolf Hall or The Gilded Age. That’s perhaps why they handed the directorial reins to Tom Shankland (who had previously adapted Les Mis for the Beeb) and writing duties to Richard Warlow (creator of the corporation’s Ripper Street). If Sicily itself is a fusion of cultures – having been occupied, at times, by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Spanish and more – then so is The Leopard.

It seems Netflix understands that the show shares many of its themes with Downton Abbey, which has often been compared to Lampedusa’s novel. Broiling class anxiety (“He wants to crush us and sweep us into the sea!” a Salina child exclaims) is mixed with sexual repression (here, aided by a healthy dollop of Catholic guilt. “How can I settle for a woman who, after every single embrace, has to recite an Ave Maria?”), The Leopard laments. It is pleasant, if familiar, not least because the book has already been adapted for an acclaimed 1963 film, starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale. The poignancy of that film was slightly undermined by a confusing melange of dubbing – here, Netflix’s technology allows viewers to seamlessly amble between native Italian, English and other options, from Hindi to Ukrainian.

Buried beneath the love triangle and the mountains of granita (for breakfast?!), The Leopard is a simple story about a man, stood on a rock in the sea, watching the tides change around him. “We were the family of great leopards,” the Prince eulogises. “Those who replace us are jackals, hyenas. Everything will be different, but worse.” As testaments to the flux of history go, The Leopard manages to be beautiful, engaging and suitably elegiac.