Stream It Or Skip It?

When you hear that a show is going to be about an assassin in 16th century France, do you expect action, cursing, sex, and some funny lines? Generally, no. But a new French series on Netflix has all of that, plus enough interesting characters, to keep things moving along.

Opening Shot: Dry ground in a valley in the south of France. It’s the early 16th century, and a drought ravages the region. A man stands on a rock with a noose around his neck, trying to hang himself.

The Gist: As he prepares to kick away the rock he’s standing on, a one-eyed woman comes to him and asks him where his daughter is. We hear his voice say, “On my tombstone, I want it to say, ‘If you want a long and peaceful life, never have children.”

A few days earlier, we see the man in Lamartine City, a merchant town in the south of France. Néro (Pio Marmaï) is an assassin for Nicolas de Rochemort (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), the vice consul of Lamartine. Rochemort is pretty ruthless sort; for instance, he has Néro kill the fiancé of his daughter Hortense (Alice Isaaz) and make it look like the young general died in battle. He wants her to marry the Prince of Ségur, which will give him lots of power and wealth.

When the consul gets in the way of those plans, Rochemort decides that it’s time for the consul to go. He doesn’t send Néro to kill him, but another member of his “team” of specialists. Even though it’s impossible to get to the consul, the chosen assassin is placed in his chambers, thanks to the efforts of a strange one-eyed woman (Camille Razat) that Rochemort hired. But whatever the woman did has made the assassin sick.

When Rochemort is installed as consul, he invites Néro to dinner. That’s when he tells his assassin that the woman, a witch named La Borgne, wants Néro for a job, and that the collar he gave to Néro is actually a choker she uses to control him. Apparently, Néro has a daughter that he claims he never knew he had, and the witch needs to kill the girl.

Néro goes to an orphanage, run by a monk named Horace (Olivier Gourmet); he knows the girl, a product of a night with a local prostitute, is there. The teen, named Perla (Lili-Rose Carlier Taboury), resists, not knowing who he is. Néro goes back to Rochemort, looking to take the collar off, and ends up stabbing the witch, making it look like he killed her. Rochemort responds by telling the rest of his assassins to kill Néro.

Perla finds out that Néro is her father; the two team with Horace to go to Ségur, where the archbishop there can protect her from people like the witch.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Néro The Assassin has got the feel of shows like Marie Antoinette, which has some irreverence and potentially a fair amount of nudity.

Our Take: Néro The Assassin is the kind of show where you may scratch your head at some of the mythology that drives the story, or at the very least lose the thread of why this one-eyed witch is so keen on killing Perla. It has something to do with Perla being the last child of the devil, or something like that. But it may not matter, as it seems like Néro and the people he has around them are interesting enough that the journey and chase is more interesting than the destination.

By the end of the episode, Néro, Perla and Horace are in Rochemort’s carriage, holding Hortense hostage, on their way to Ségur. It’s not an easy journey, taking two days and holding lots of risk, but Rochemort is determined to marry Hortense off to the prince, and the other three are intent on getting to the archbishop. We’d imagine that, given Hortense’s reluctance to get married off, she may join Néro and company in their quest as a way of getting away from the fate her father has set up for her.

One thing we do know is that the show has set up not one, but two excellent Big Bads in the witch and Rochemort. They’ll often be at odds with each other, but the idea that Rochemort’s ruthlessness knows no bounds might make him even more dangerous than the witch and her otherworldly powers. Of course, this is all speculation at this point, but such a scenario would make sense, wouldn’t it?

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see some later on in the season.

Parting Shot: A couple of thieves find out the hard way that La Borgne isn’t as easy to kill as Néro may have thought when he stabbed her.

Sleeper Star: Lili-Rose Carlier Taboury’s Perla looks like she’s going to be an asset to Néro while also probably being a pain in his backside.

Most Pilot-y Line: “He stays alive until we find his last-born child,” says La Borgne about Néro. Does that mean the last one to be born, as if Néro has more than one child? Or is she referring to the devil and not Néro?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Néro The Assassin has enough action and irreverence, with interesting protagonists and antagonists, to keep viewers engaged, despite a muddy mythology.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.