In the second half of the 19th century, Italy was changing: Unification was underway, and Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Redshirt army was on the verge of conquering the island of Sicily. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s posthumously published 1958 novel Il Gattopardo (in English, The Leopard) chronicled that period through the eyes of the Sicilian aristocratic Corbera family, in an enduring epic that became the highest-selling novel in Italian history. Now, years after Luchino Visconti’s Palme d’Or–winning film adaptation, the story comes to life once again, in a new limited series.

Tom Shankland, who directed several episodes of The Leopard, was raised steeped in the history of Sicily; his father was a professor in Europe, and the family spent a great deal of time there. “I read the book in my 20s and thought, ‘it’s a wonderful book,’ ” Shankland tells Tudum. “It seems to speak to the Sicily that I experienced as a child, through the prism of this family.” 

As an adult, Shankland married a woman from Sicily, and soon returned to The Leopard. “There was something about revisiting it which was massively thrilling,” he says. “I’m a bit older now than I was when I first read it. And I think there’s so much about that book that’s about change and experiencing personal change as well as social and political change.”

While filming The Leopard, Shankland was able to reexperience his own first visit to Sicily — through the eyes of a few newcomers. “One of my two children was of similar age to me on the first trip,” he says. “It was beautiful seeing their response to Sicily.”

You can get a taste of that beauty below, and watch The Leopard on Netflix now.

What is The Leopard about?

The Leopard tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (Kim Rossi Stuart), a Sicilian nobleman whose family weathers the changing tides of Italian life during Garibaldi’s conquest. When the Redshirts arrive in Palermo, Corbera and his family flee to his Donnafugata estate, where their situation quickly becomes precarious. As times change, the Corbera family will have to adapt to survive — or die on the vine.

How does The Leopard end?

Soon after the Corberas arrive in Donnafugata, Don Fabrizio’s Redshirt-sympathetic nephew Tancredi (Saul Nanni) marries Angelica (Deva Cassel), the daughter of the town’s mayor, Don Calogero Sedara (Francesco Colella). It’s a love affair that comes at the cost of Concetta (Benedetta Porcaroli), Don Fabrizio’s most adored daughter, who’s had a long flirtation with her cousin. Heartbroken over Tancredi’s snub and her father’s failure to prevent the marriage, Concetta flees to a convent and cuts herself off from the world.

But she is soon drawn back into her family’s life when her father’s heir, Paolo (Alberto Rossi), dies in an accident, leaving everyone bereft. Don Fabrizio is offered the position of senator in the new government, and Concetta joins him in Turin, where she’s quickly caught up in a love triangle between Colonel Bombello (Alessandro Sperduti) and an unfaithful Tancredi. 

But Concetta withdraws from both men as she realizes her father is dying. With Mayor Sedara and Angelica circling the Corberas’ estate like vultures, Concetta helps her father thwart the takeover by taking control of the family’s assets alongside her brother Francesco (Ruben Mulet Porena). Don Fabrizio rejects the king’s offer of a position in the senate and dies peacefully with his family around him — one of the last of the ancient, unchangeable “leopards” of Italy.

Is The Leopard based on a book?

Yes! Based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel, The Leopard is a political tale, but it’s also incredibly personal: the story of a family in the midst of nationwide tumult. “I always got that feeling that I wasn’t being sold a message in the book,” Shankland says, “but I was definitely being given a really kind of profound and touching experience of family life and the way it has to navigate huge, turbulent historical changes.”

Today, Shankland sees that story through the lens of his own modern family’s experiences. “I hope that people watch it and feel that it will give them a way of reflecting back on what is going on with all of us in the last few years, where we’ve had pandemics and crazy politics and all the rest of it,” he says. “How do we survive as families — as humans — in that and what’s the most important thing? What can survive that? What changes, what doesn’t?” 

It’s a question perhaps answered by one of the most famous lines in the original novel: “For things to remain the same, everything must change.”

Who is in the cast of The Leopard?

The cast of The Leopard includes:

• Kim Rossi Stuart (Senza Pelle) as Don Fabrizio Corbera, prince of Salina
• Benedetta Porcaroli (Immaculate) as Concetta Corbera of Salina
• Deva Cassel (The Beautiful Summer) as Angelica Sedara
• Saul Nanni (Brado) as Tancredi Falconeri
• Paolo Calabresi (Boris) as Padre Pirrone
• Francesco Colella (The Good Mothers) as Don Calogero Sedara
• Astrid Meloni (The Swarm) as Maria Stella Corbera of Salina
• Francesco Di Leva (The Children’s Train) as Russo

When will The Leopard be on Netflix?

The Leopard is streaming now on Netflix.