Irons Plots Vatican Coup in ‘Borgias’; Dark ‘Killing’: Review
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“The Borgias,” Showtime’s lavish costume drama about the poisonous family that put the machiavelli in Machiavelli, handily beats “The Tudors” and “Rome” in premium cable’s bloody-history sweepstakes.
Written and occasionally directed by Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game”), the nine-episode “Borgias” begins in 1492, when the New World is little more than rumor. Tightening his grip on the Old one is Rodrigo Borgia (Jeremy Irons), a cardinal and patriarch (the two were not then exclusive) who bribes his way into the Vatican as Pope Alexander VI.