BIRD BRAIN: Leonardo (played by Tom Riley) gets to be a brawling, girl-squeezing detective in a new series about the painter/inventor. (
)
If honest Abe can hunt vampires, and mild-mannered Dr. Van Helsing can be a superhero hunk — well, then brilliant, circumspect Leonardo da Vinci — a man jailed for homosexuality — can be a womanizing bad boy in a leather jacket, open-to-the-waist shirt and tight pants.
Call him Leonardo Las Vegas.
Welcome to Friday night’s semi-ridiculous-but-fun “Da Vinci’s Demons” from Starz, the channel that bought us “Spartacus.”
The man behind the series, David S. Goyer, has said in interviews that da Vinci was a kind of superhero. And so he apparently decided to turn him into one. Literally .
Why? Who knows. I mean, if boring morons make a living exposing their lives on reality TV, why create a fake life for the most interesting man who ever lived?
Maybe Leonardo wasn’t cool enough for 2013.
At any rate, Goyer seems to have substituted the life of the greatest Italian painter, Caravaggio (an infamous, bar-brawling, womanizing, trouble-maker) for the real life of Da Vinci.
By most accounts, Da Vinci was a man who had been so shaken after being accused of sodomy that he forever kept his private life, not to mention his privates, to himself.
But in this limited-run series, 25-year-old Leonardo (Tom Riley) has spiked hair and sexy, bad-boy charm — and, of course, tight pants.
Not even Leonardo couldn’t have invented this Leonardo.
The series follows the trouble-making artist who, when not carousing, invents machine guns and a manned kite that he forces his idiot assistant and foil, Nico Machiavelli — yes, that Machiavelli (Eros Vlahos) — to fly on.
In between, he paints topless beauties who fall at his feet (and other parts).
But Leonardo’s real love is solving mysteries like some 15th century Sherlock Holmes.
From a strange man called “The Turk” (Alexander Siddig), da Vinci finds out about the Book of Leaves, which may hold the secrets of creation and enables yet another subplot.
Since this is the Italian Renaissance (though everyone speaks in an English accent), we have corruption in high places, including a naked and naughty Pope Sixtus IV (James Faulkner), whom we first meet in a bath with a young boy. Don’t ask.
For serious scheming, there is Count Girolamo Riario (Blake Ritson), an influential bad guy with a Beatles haircut and black sunglasses (did da Vinci invent Ray-Bans, too?). Riario, it turns out, also wants to get his hands on the Book of Leaves.
There are naked women aplenty, lots of action, multiple plots, lots of swordplay, more pyrotechnics than James Bond could afford and, best of all, cleverly recreated da Vinci inventions. Suspend disbelief and you’ll have fun, but believe and you’re in trouble.