'The Borgias' delivers strong numbers in Showtime bow
On a night crowded with cable premieres, "The Borgias" delivered solid ratings Sunday for Showtime, which saw better numbers than it did for the opening of "The Tudors" a few years back.
The premiere of the series about the famously treacherous Italian family — with Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia, the Renaissance baron who became a pope — delivered 1.1 million total viewers, according to the Nielsen Co.
That's a decent showing for a pay outlet such as Showtime, and it easily surpassed the 869,000 who showed up for the launch of the network's "The Tudors" in 2007.
Sunday made for a competitive night on cable TV, as AMC's crime drama "The Killing" and ReelzChannel's controversial miniseries "The Kennedys" also opened. Interestingly, the Showtime series will also have a rival in a European-financed version of the Borgia clan's story, produced by former "Homicide" writer Tom Fontana.
Show Trackers, what do you think of "The Borgias"?
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Jeremy Irons talks about "The Borgias"
— Scott Collins (twitter.com/scottcollinsLAT)
Photo: Jeremy Irons in "The Borgias." Credit: Jonathan Hession / Showtime.
enjoyable...but would have preferred more tudors!
Posted by: debi | April 04, 2011 at 06:26 PM
Is there a connection between the Borgia and Borghese empires ?
http://burghesius.blogspot.com/2011/04/borgia-and-borghese-family-of-popes.html
Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia | April 04, 2011 at 06:34 PM
Liked the show, but one correction for the article: the Borgias are Spanish, not Italian. That's a pretty big deal for the plot.
Posted by: Alex6 | April 05, 2011 at 04:43 AM