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t’s a brave film-maker who takes on the story of the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci. Can their treatment hope to measure up to the real figure who – for starters – painted the world’s most famous canvas, designed flying machines and was a ground-breaking anatomist and scientist. “He was such a towering genius, so good at so many things, it’s actually hard to believe he was real,” says Frank Spotnitz, the driving force behind the Amazon Prime drama Leonardo, which launches in the UK and Ireland this month. “You have to make him credible, but also not trivialise him or make his genius mundane or silly.” Leonardo has featured in many fictional works, including novels, TV shows, video games and movies. Yet, only two major TV series have been made in half a century: RAI’s Golden
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Matthew Bell discovers how European producers and broadcasters struck new alliances for Amazon’s lavish new drama Leonardo
Globe-winning 1971 biopic La Vita di Leonardo Da Vinci; and the BBC’s 2003 semi-dramatised documentary, Leonardo, starring Mark Rylance. The new eight-part series – made on a hefty ¤30m budget – is a triumph of European co-operation, involving Spotnitz’s company, Big Light Productions, Italian producers Lux Vide and RAI Fiction, France Télévisions, Spain’s RTVE, Germany’s ZDF and Sony Pictures Television. Despite its pan-European origins, Leonardo is anything but a stodgy, uninspiring “euro pudding”. The series looks beautiful, with cinematographer Steve Lawes using the light available to Leonardo – daylight and moonlight from outside, candlelight and firelight inside – to shoot the series. The performances are convincing and Poldark hunk Aidan Turner impresses as the obsessive, troubled painter.
Amazon Prime Video
A genius in his prime
