Unlike the glossy melodrama of The Borgias (Showtime), Tom Fontana’s Borgia (Canal+/ZDF) is a gritty, political, and psychological horror show dressed in Renaissance robes. Episode 3 is where the series stops introducing characters and starts vivisecting them. The Price of the Papal Chair Logline: As Rodrigo Borgia settles into the papacy, his first diplomatic crisis—welcoming a deposed Moorish prince into Rome—becomes a crucible that tests his family's loyalty, his mistress's ambition, and his own nascent tyranny.
Djem to Rodrigo: “You are not the Pope. You are a pimp who has convinced the world his whores are saints.” borgia 1x03
Rodrigo’s solution is pure Borgia: leverage. He invites (the eponymous "Moor"), the exiled brother of Sultan Bayezid II, to Rome. Djem is a golden hostage—Bayezid will pay 40,000 ducats per year for his captivity. It’s extortion as statecraft. Unlike the glossy melodrama of The Borgias (Showtime),
(Subtract half a star only because the Juan subplot—drinking, whoring, being dull—feels like filler.) Djem to Rodrigo: “You are not the Pope