The Showtime historical drama The Borgias will no longer be available on Netflix, starting Feb. 1. The show is among the licensed titles leaving Netflix by Jan. 31. Although The Borgias is leaving, it is still available on Showtime’s own streaming app. Paramount+ subscribers can also access The Borgias with the Showtime add-on.
The Borgias is a three-season series set during the Renaissance when the Borgia family dominated politics and business in the Italian peninsula. They stop at nothing to accumulate power and became one of history’s most notorious crime families. British filmmaker Neil Jordan (Mona Lisa, Interview with the Vampire) created the series and wrote the scripts with David Leland and Guy Burt. It aired between April 2011 and June 2013.
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Jeremy Irons led the all-star cast as Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia. François Arnaud, Holliday Grainger, Joanne Whalley, Lotte Verbeek, David Oakes, Sean Harris, Aidan Alexander, Colm Feore, and Gina McKee round out the main cast. Critical response to the show was mixed, but it still won Emmys for its theme title music and costumes. Irons also picked up a Golden Globe nomination in 2012.
Jordan had plans to tell the Borgias’ story over four seasons, but Showtime canceled the series before Season 3 finished airing. Jordan asked Showtime if there could be a two-hour movie to wrap things up, but even that was too costly. “When they looked at what it could cost, it was just too expensive,” Jordan told Deadline in 2012. “Sadly, that’s what happened. I would have loved to bring all the characters to a conclusion. All of the actors were heartbroken we couldn’t continue, and so was I.” Showtime and Jordan later published the two-hour finale script as an e-book, which is still available. Although the show ended earlier than he hoped, Jordan said he was still pleased with the finale.
“I wanted a totally biblical ending, for the pope to burn in hell,” Jordan said of his unfilmed finale. He wanted to show Pope Alexander VI dying, with no one willing to hear his final confession. When he finally finds someone to listen, the confessor would interrupt the pope to tell him he was too late and was already burning in hell. “This satisfies all moral feelings about the pope,” Jordan said.
After The Borgias, Jordan only worked on one other TV series. In 2017, he created Riviera, a Sky Atlantic series starring Anthony LaPaglia and Julia Stiles. However, when the show aired, he disowned the project and said the scripts were rewritten without his consent. The series ended in December 2020. Jordan’s next movie is Marlowe with Liam Neeson as the famous fictional private detective Philip Marlowe.
