'Da Vinci’s Demons' TV Review: Show Fails To Match Inventiveness Of Its Star

Da Vinci’s Demons brings Leonardo da Vinci back to life in a show that even Lorenzo Medici (Elliot Cowan) wouldn’t pay fifty Florins to watch. Da Vinci was an extraordinary man by all accounts. While widely regarded as one of the greatest painters in history with pieces such as the Mona Lisa, he was also very innovative, sketching out futuristic designs like his concept of a flying machine. Yet, for a show about the Renaissance Man, it is anything but inventive. Da Vinci is the star of a semi-fantastical world full of drama and dull characters fitting of a show on the CW (even then I would watch Arrow over Da Vinci’s Demons any day of the week), not Starz.

Played by Tom Riley, Leonardo da Vinci is undoubtedly the highlight of the show. He is a brilliant man – able to draw a portrait of the beautiful Lucrezia Donati (Laura Haddock) in a matter of minutes or sketch out the mechanics of a flying bird in mere seconds. He is the Renaissance version of Tony Stark or Sherlock Holmes, combining genius with the ability to spit out words comparable to the firepower of a machine gun, which he develops in this week’s episode, "The Serpent." It is uncanny how much he resembles the two Robert Downey Jr.-played characters in his role as weapons engineer for the Medici family in Florence, with his ability to foreshadow a combat situation and diagram a crime scene, and his tendency to wear his perceived superiority (but not arrogance, as he explains, “arrogance implies that I exaggerate my own worth, I don’t”) on his sleeve, whether in conversation with his friends or while being brutally beaten by his father’s mercenaries.

Although Da Vinci’s rapid-fire personality is the best part of the show, it can be exhausting at times and complete with explosive tantrums. Furthermore, he gets hardly any help from the rest of the characters in the show, as they have so little intrigue. Lorenzo Medici plays the stock character of the leader charged with protecting Florence from the increasingly powerful forces of Pope Sixtus IV, who also dabbles in a bit of homosexuality and misandry. Da Vinci’s loyal friends include Zoroaster (Gregg Chillin), Nico (Eros Vlahos), and Vanessa (Hera Hilmer); Zoroaster plays the comic foil, while Vanessa is simply there as the token woman. Though Zoroaster could not be more correct when he takes a dig at Da Vinci’s love interest, Lucrezia, saying, “It takes no great skill to [have sex with] a pretty face…,” as she has the personality of a rock.

Of course, Da Vinci’s Demons makes Lucrezia’s lifeless character integral to the show, because it cares more about drama and mystery than creating an interesting plot. Her role as a spy for the Pope’s war dog, Girolamo Riario (Blake Ritson), is one of the many ridiculous events in the show, as who would employ someone with seemingly nothing in her skull? There are also the constant dream sequences relentlessly forced upon us, as if we were the ones in a drug-induced haze. Da Vinci drifts from being distraught at his inability to see his mother’s face in his only memory as a baby (he has a eidetic memory!) to finding himself drinking from the fountain of memories with the mysterious and magical Turk, Al-Rahim (Alexander Siddig), who takes upon the wizened and always ethnic cosmic mentor character. In an ominous and prophetic tone, Al-Rahim brings up the Book of Leaves as the centerpiece item in the battle between good and evil and convinces Da Vinci to find it. Why a man like Da Vinci, who believes in science, takes on this quest is beyond me. But Da Vinci’s Demons manages to turn the realm of magic into reality in a plot that is eerily similar to the story in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II. The show serves as a testament to how innovative that game was, as the visualization of Florence in the Starz show reminded me of running through the somehow more vibrant virtual city in Assassin’s Creed II as Ezio Auditore.

It’s too bad that Da Vinci’s Demons focuses much of its time on the fantastical storyline of the Book of Leaves, because the best scenes of the first two episodes involved Da Vinci’s inventive genius. I was enthralled by the CGI pencil sketches of how Da Vinci broke down the mechanics of the birds’ flight or his visions of how his half of the key worked. I couldn’t help but smile when the first rendition of his machine gun-like weapon mercilessly failed upon its first firing, showing that even a brilliant inventor like Da Vinci couldn’t escape the sometimes frustrating process of experimentation.

I came into Da Vinci’s Demons expecting a show that explored the brilliance of The Renaissance Man. Instead, Da Vinci was turned into a superhero, with an unmatched flare for swordplay and theatrics alike, who stumbles upon shadowy organization after shadowy organization in this ridiculous retelling of a famous man in history.

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