Apparently I Like TV Now. Don’t Tell Anyone.

I’m not a fan of TV shows. Decades of half-baked characters, formulaic writing, and predictable story arcs have worn me down. Many start strong but become repetitive and soap operatic as they run out of ideas. Historical dramas are the worst: As if a few invented details aren’t irritating enough, social media then explodes with alternative histories that make my brain melt. When I spotted the French series Néro the Assassin on Netflix, I braced myself for more of the same… but it’s actually a different beast entirely, and really rather good.

The series is a dark, medieval comedy set around the fictional French realms of Lamartine, Ségur and Havreval. Between these privileged domains, a violent cult called the Penitents terrorises the poor, demanding brutal sacrifices to end the devastating famine that has befallen them. Meanwhile at Lamartine, the corrupt vice consul lives in luxury… plotting his rise to the consulship and maintaining a band of killers to neutralise anything that gets in his way. One of his most loyal men is the handsome, cocky assassin called (you guessed it) Néro: a strangely likeable dickhead who is as good at killing his targets as he is pissing off everyone else.

Néro works because it never pretends to be real. Any expectation of historical accuracy is quickly tossed aside by a lore steeped in magic and witchcraft. The modern French dialogue and slightly anachronistic costume design seem to deliberately signal that this is not the 16th century you know, but a parallel one tuned for your entertainment. The violence is extreme even by medieval standards, yet is often framed in ways to make you laugh… then feel terrible about it. Even the tamer humour, like Néro’s naked journey through Limbo culminating in a dick joke, seems like a bad idea in theory but lands perfectly in execution.

So anyway, this isn’t really a review. It’s more of a reluctant admission. I still distrust television on principle. I still expect half-baked characters and soap-operatic decay. But every so often something like Néro turns up, gleefully ahistorical and morally unwell, and forces me to revise the complaint:

I don’t like TV shows. I just… apparently like this one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯