Do you think Jude Law has a body double?
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Jude Law.
Pope. Naked Pope. The Young Pope.
Jude Law’s holy nakedness, framed by biblically-proportioned shoulders, in the architectural splendour of the Vatican less than two weeks after Easter – a miracle?
While much on television causes me to turn to my old buddies, the books, not so The Young Pope (SBS Wednesday’s 10.35pm).
My last TV fixations were nearly three years ago – Fargo and the first series of True Detective.
Three years is a long time to wait for anything decent on the tele.
I’ve been impatient. Even Great Continental Railway Journeys is dead to me, because, like QI and Myth Busters it seems to appear most nights.
Jude Law. No linen. No trains. With Dianne Keaton. Ciao vecchio amico (google it).
I’ve only watched the first episode of The Young Pope. Quickly I was enamoured by its magnificence of perfect scenes and irony-fuelled script.
Jude Law is the first American Pope.
Previously known as Lenny Belardo, he becomes Pope Pius XIII, and therein we glimpse the type of cigarette-smoking, hot buns, erotic dreaming and scheming Pope, Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino has written and directed.
I could watch, just for the occasional cigarette smoking scene – and I don’t and haven’t ever, smoked. But Jude Law is smokin’.
But it’s better than just cigarettes. It’s better than fabulous tailoring, shoes, and even better than (nun) Diane Keaton `Mary’. A hint of scandal to come?
Apparently, The Young Pope first screened out of competition at the 2016 Venice Film Festival – the first time tele has been part of the space reserved for the likes of Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful) or Carlo Ponti (Doctor Zhivago) and Sophia Loren.
Five minutes into the first episode of The Young Pope I reached for one of our very last Easter eggs, put my feet up onto the couch and settled the cat on my lap.
I dove into the story, like I would dive into a good book. I was lifted out of my living room and into the Vatican’s cloisters.
Quickly I was enamoured by its magnificence ...
At one point, I was standing alongside newly-elected Pope Lenny on his special St Peter’s balcony - the Loggia of the Benediction - where he espoused the rights of gay people to marry, legalised nuns’ right to become priests, urged all to masturbate more often and prompted those in unhappy marriages, to divorce.
(Note to self: Vatican.com is a real website, knows stuff AND offers free worldwide shipping for handy products like Natural Face Care Products from the Dead Sea (true) and links to Jerusalem.com; Prayer for Health, and, Pray for Little Gabriel and his family. There are quick links to the Pope, the Holy See, Rome hotels and my personal fave, News from the Vatican.)
Having only watched the first, beautiful, sarcasm-filled episode (SBS On Demand) I confess to the total superficiality of peaking at The Young Pope for Hot Jude.
How could you not love a young pope who insists on Diet Cherry Cola for breakfast, made an old nun his adviser, made old priests angry and apparently let the Vatican’s stilettoed media adviser sit on the Papal throne when she briefed him about `unrest’?
Or the old nun, Diane Keaton, who thoughtfully hid the young Pope’s cigarettes in a red velvet pouch and carried, not the bible, but the book `He – Understanding Male Psychology’ under her arm? So clever. So Italian.