Vincent Delecroix’s novel dramatises refugee crossings in small boats (Pic: Wikimedia Commons)
Netflix’s adaptation of The Leopard breathes new life into Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa’s classic novel. It offers a layered and visually striking portrayal of class in 19th century Sicily.
The show’s greatest value lies not in its romantic grandeur, but in how it lays bare the mechanisms of the old land-owning class’s survival. And it displays the limits of “bourgeois” liberal revolution.
At its heart, The Leopard remains a study of class preservation masquerading as progress as it makes cosmetic changes to preserve its power.
Don Fabrizio, played by a great Kim Rossi Stuart, watches his world crumble not in flames but in velvet.
The Netflix series captures this dynamic with striking clarity. It extends what the novel and Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film touched upon—that historical “progress” often functions as a reshuffling of power.
Crucially, the series amplifies the political dimension more than either the book or the film. Scenes show peasant unrest, land disputes and the calculated alliances between the fading aristocracy and the emerging capitalist class.
Angelica’s father, Don Calogero, is no longer just a social climber. He is capitalism incarnate. He is ambitious, property-driven, and hungry for legitimacy. His daughter’s marriage to Tancredi is not a romance—it’s a class merger.
What sets this adaptation apart is its willingness to linger on structural inequality without romanticising it. Don Fabrizio is portrayed with complexity—aware of his class’s decline, yet unwilling to relinquish its dominance.
The show allows viewers to see him not just as a tragic figure, but as complicit in managing a counter-revolution from within.
The series does not ask us to weep for the aristocracy, but to study how it negotiates its survival.
Yes, the peasants and working classes still lack agency in the narrative. But there are moments where the Netflix adaptation gestures towards their latent but immense power.
It doesn’t offer a revolution—but it dramatises, perhaps more clearly than ever before, why one is necessary. In the end, the series reminds us that the ruling class never vanishes quietly—it adapts, absorbs, and rebrands. But by studying its tactics, we can better organise our own.
This series, for all its contradictions, helps illuminate the path not taken—and the one still not only possible but absolutely necessary.
- The Leopard is available on Netflix
The banality of evil in Channel crossing novel
Immigration, and in particular of people in small boats, has become a dog whistle issue for every political party from Reform UK to Labour.
Into this climate, French philosopher Vincent Delecroix has written a short novella, Small Boat.
It has become a much-discussed intervention in the debate.
Small Boat is a fictionalised look at the real events of November 2021. On one particular night, hundreds of migrants set out from the French coast heading for Britain.
And from one ill-fated dinghy, 27 men, women and children drowned. Only months before, Nigel Farage had called the Royal National Lifeboat Institution “a taxi service for illegal immigration”.
Delecroix’s first-person narrator is an unnamed young woman, working the night of the tragedy at a monitoring centre.
Despite receiving numerous calls for help, she wrongly tells the migrants that, as they were in British waters, they must call the British authorities for help.
By the time rescue vessels arrive on the scene, all but two of the migrants are dead. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than society for the disaster.
Through Delecroix’s writing, we endure her self-justifying defence, casting around for others to blame.
Delecroix’s novella, by turning its gaze to the actions of the French coastguard, points to individual culpability. It is a shocking account of the banality of evil.
Tim O’Dell
