TV Eye: Sex, violence and men in frocks

Jeremy Irons is suitably ghoulish as Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI and head of a vicious brood. Photo / Supplied

The Borgias is family drama but not of the kind you'll be letting the young ones stay up to watch.

In The Borgias, a family melodrama about a family who just happen to be more powerful than kings, there is sex (the first bonking scene arrives within five minutes of last night's first episode), sibling rivalry, attempted murder and, possibly, incest.

No lesbian kisses yet, but let's not rule them out. The Borgias screens at 9.30pm (Wednesdays, TV3) so in theory the kiddies and all of those poor old people in rest homes who are having their tea at 5.30pm (why are adults given their tea at the time kiddies are having theirs, anyway?) should be safely tucked up asleep and safe from the smut.

Except for the naked writhing bodies, and the lack of a lesbian kiss, The Borgias doesn't seem any ruder than Coronation Street which is being moved to 5.30pm to make way for Australian MasterChef, another dreary game show posing as a cooking show. Do I care? As I haven't, for many years now, watched any TV that hasn't been MySky-ed (or supplied on a DVD for the purposes of reviewing), I can't really bring myself to work up any outrage.

And I went cold turkey on Corrie some time ago now. I did pop in for the 50th anniversary and was both pleased and appalled to see that they're all still at it: the adulterous bonking, the sibling rivalry, the attempted murders. I'd start watching again if a serious plot to murder Gail unfolded, but one can but despair. So all I really think about moving Corrie is that if you can't have MySky in the rest home where you have to have your tea at 5.30pm, I'd rather be shot than have to go there.

I'm similarly unmoved by complaints that Corrie has got raunchy. It has got silly, certainly, but that's only a problem if you keep watching it.

The Borgias, it goes without saying - this is historical drama with as much rumpy pumpy as pomp; the latter it does magnificently - will have plenty of silliness. And it has to because it is mostly populated by calculating old men in red frocks, so it requires rather a lot of sexing up to make it sexy viewing.

The oldest of the ancient geezers is shuffled off the scene quickly. The dying Pope Innocent VIII proves not particularly prescient on his death bed: "You will fight like dogs over this corpse." I wonder how those cardinals had the energy. The Pope to be (he wins the election for the papal throne with bribes), Rodrigo Borgia, who is about to become Pope Alexander VI is a very busy fellow. In addition to all of his conniving, he has to maintain his illegitimate family of a mistress and four children. This, presumably, is the reason the new Pope, played cadaverously by Jeremy Irons, looks so exhausted. He's creepy enough - in that slightly reptilian way that Irons has perfected - but the creepiest character so far is Lucrezia, Rodrigo's only daughter, who is about 12 at the beginning of this saga and who has a horrible liking for perving on her favourite brother, Cesare - and there's something really nasty going on, or about to go on, there.

There's already plenty to get outraged about, should one be so inclined. Speculation about the condition of the new Pope's, er, equipment, for one thing. And accuracy, for another. Would Cesare really call Lucrezia "sis"? Well maybe. Who knows with those Borgias? They possibly weren't as rotten a lot as they were painted, but that wouldn't make for television silly enough to be worth MySkying, now would it?

- TimeOut