“Young Pope” Has Credibility Problems
Matt Zoller Seitz writes: ‘You should know going into HBO’s “The Young Pope” [debuting Sunday] that the series has plausibility issues. One is that the titular pontiff, Pius XIII (Jude Law), is a chain-smoking Diet Cherry Coke addict who hails from Brooklyn. The five episodes sent to critics contain little information about how such an unprecedented development could occur, and eventually you have to just accept that it’s not something the show is interested in exploring — although we do get flashbacks to the hero’s youth as a sweet boy abandoned by his hippie parents and raised by an earthy, funky nun (Diane Keaton, of all people) whom he calls Mama.’
