SERIES REVIEW – French mainstream cinema has recently fallen back in love with large-scale adventure: one of the latest milestones was the two-part adaptation The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan / The Three Musketeers: Milady. Now two-time César nominee and audience favorite Pio Marmaï fronts Netflix France’s big 2025 swing: the eight-episode Nero the Assassin, shot quietly last year in the South of France with detours to Italy and Spain. Nero the Assassin follows a contract killer who must extract his estranged daughter from a tightening ring of malevolent forces — an ambitious, action-driven serial set in 16th-century France. Is the ride worth it?

The year is 1504: the South of France is withering under a historic drought while Nero earns his keep as a hired blade for councilman Rochemort (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing). Rochemort is arranging a marriage for his daughter, Hortense (Alice Isaaz), and already eyeing the next rung on the ladder — replacing his superior, Lamartine. Meanwhile, the Vatican deciphers a sinister prophecy: the Devil will take bodily form in a young child, so an envoy is dispatched to France… The prophesied “subject” turns out to be Perla (Lili-Rose Carlier Taboury), Nero’s fourteen-year-old daughter, left years ago at an orphanage under the supervision of Father Horace (Olivier Gourmet). As Rochemort’s chess moves click into place, a string of raw reversals, bad breaks, and double-crosses forces Nero onto the road with Perla, trailed by hostile pursuers and a few unwilling companions. They also have to steer clear of white-painted, sadistic religious fanatics — the “Penitents” — who are seizing more and more towns and villages.

Blood, Dust, and the Flash of Steel — A Father and Daughter Beneath a Teetering House of Cards

Nero the Assassin’s creative leads — co-writer/director Allan Mauduit and co-writer Jean-Patrick Benes — have already proved they can steer morally dubious characters through murky worlds: their earlier, critically praised Kaboul Kitchen (Canal+) captured the absurdities of an expat restaurant in war-torn 2005 Afghanistan. Historical accuracy isn’t the priority here either; the dialogue is deliberately modern — at times blunt and profane. That contemporary register isn’t window dressing but a tool: it sharpens the characters’ edges and pushes the stakes closer to the viewer.

Nero the Assassin pulls you in fast. The world-building is imposing, the characters are cleanly drawn, and everyone lives a hair’s breadth from certain death. Survival isn’t posture but practice: sometimes lying and cheating is quicker than drawing steel. The Spanish and Italian locations aren’t random postcards; the series — and its title character — owe a clear debt to 1960s/’70s spaghetti westerns and genre cinema. Sun-blasted stone, wide frames, and flinty exchanges carry that lineage.

Clash of the Arcane and the Blade

For all the stylized action and the occult notes — including Camille Razat (Emily in Paris) as a one-eyed, scarred witch, an outright harbinger of death — Nero the Assassin doesn’t deflate the mood with meta gags or wink-wink antics. It keeps the stakes high: after a long development, the show finally landing on Netflix brings not a twist machine but character-driven storytelling, even as each episode is willing to spin the board hard.

At its heart are two father–daughter bonds. One is Rochemort and Hortense: circumstance and nasty revelations force her to weaponize wit, masks, and appearances to assemble a fragile independence. The other is Nero and Perla: a morally frayed, instinct-driven hitman who suddenly reaches for principles — because he’s found the one person he won’t (and can’t) betray.

A Horror-Tinged Chronicle with Social Background

The series gladly dips into horror and occasionally veers into social commentary: parched villages left in dust after the drought, massacres by the Penitents, and power brokers — secular and religious — cutting deals to save their own skins. It doesn’t lean on tear-jerking cues, yet you start rooting for this band of outsiders and losers — helped by seasoned character actors like Olivier Gourmet. Some secondary players could use more runway, but the show still arrives as a fully realized serialized adventure. And yes, it’s aiming for a Season 2 — not on the back of a cheap cliffhanger, but because the world and its people still have reserves to draw on.

Final Frame: Choices, Not Pageantry

Nero the Assassin isn’t chasing the “what happens,” so much as the “how much can a person carry” when good ends demand dirty means. Nero — who has coasted on impulse and comfort — suddenly has rules; Perla isn’t a plot key but ballast, shifting the weight of every scene. The world stays cold, the choices have heft, and when the image quiets down, what lingers isn’t spectacle but reckoning. If there’s more to come, it shouldn’t be because the story needs one more twist, but because this dusty universe still has burdens its characters haven’t finished shouldering.

-Herpai Gergely BadSector-