The Borgias...

Watched The Borgias tonight with commodorified, fairestcat, auriaephiala, deakat, and raynedaze.

Mixed feelings. I expected something as extravagantly hokey and superficial as The Tudors, and it wasn't that. It was... in many ways very impressive. But just a little flat. Not quite real enough. Not enough variation in tone.

• Seems to me Rodrigo Borgia was exculpated from a lot. I expected him to be more calculating and ruthless; instead, while he was calculating enough, it was Cesare who was the ruthless one, and Rodrigo was more of an innocent than I expected. I don't know the history well enough to know the truth.
  
  
• Loved the title sequence.
  
  
• Sadly, the real Rodrigo Borgia did not look like Jeremy Irons. Pity.
  
  
• Lucrezia seemed a little too artless. At fourteen? Shouldn't she have been something of a sophisticate? Or was she less intelligent than I have always imagined? Actually, though they said she was fourteen, according to Wikipedia she was born in 1480, so she would have been twelve. She seemed much more like twelve than fourteen to my eyes.
  
  
• Gorgeous costumes and scenery. I kept thinking nostalgically of Italy, and Italian art. Or picturing the characters as characters in one of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo novels. And the poisoned monkey made me think of Margaret Lennox's monkey in Queen's Play.
  
  
• I'm way too much of a Renaissance history greek: I kept getting warm fuzzy feelings at all those familial family names, Orsini and Sforza and della Rovere and such.
  
  
• I couldn't help thinking: in 1492 Rodrigo Borgia must have been about 60. Martin Luther was just approaching puberty. Henry VIII was an infant. Calvin would be born seventeen years later. Machiavelli, who understood that sort of scheming only too well, was twenty-three.
  
  An era was ending.
  

Studying French...

This question is basically for Ottawa people, though others might have good advice, too.

I need to upgrade my French as much as possible, and quickly. I've been looking into the possibilities. Ideally, I want something intense and immersion-like, in afternoons or evenings so that I can work to 12:30 and get to French class on time. I'd prefer French-Canadian teachers. It must be accessible by bus.

I've heard good things about the programme at Algonquin College, but that is somewhat difficult for me to get to. I didn't see anything quite what I had in mind at Carleton or Ottawa U. Alliance Française is well located and fits my schedule, but I've heard comments that make me think that might not be the best place to go.

So do any of you have advice? Places you've studied with that had good teachers and good results? Where do people go when they're studying for bilingual classification with the government?