The Young Pope was Paolo Sorrentino's first television series, taking about three years from writing to post-production between 2014 and 2016, with a budget of 40 million euros financed by Sky, Canal+ and HBO, partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

The show's opening title sequence features the Pope walking through a gallery of famous religious paintings, including works by Caravaggio, Perugino and Francesco Hayez, set to a cover of Bob Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower' by Devlin and Ed Sheeran.

Principal photography lasted seven months starting in August 2015, filmed mainly at Cinecittà studios where the Vatican interiors were recreated, with garden scenes shot at Villa Lante, Villa Medici and the Orto Botanico in Rome, and additional scenes filmed at Palazzo Venezia and in Piazza San Marco, Venice.

The Pope is almost always filmed only from the waist up, even while walking, to create the false impression that he is 'floating' or soaring; Sorrentino said he borrowed this technique from Spike Lee's films.

The Young Pope was the first Italian TV series ever nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award, and it remains the only Italian series to have received both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

The world premiere of the first two episodes at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival on 3 September 2016 marked the first time in the festival's history that a TV series was included in its program.

In Italy, the two-hour series premiere achieved the highest overnight ratings ever recorded for pay TV network Sky, drawing 953,000 viewers and surpassing the debuts of Gomorrah and the Italian release of Game of Thrones.

A sequel miniseries, The New Pope, was announced in May 2017, again directed by Sorrentino, with Jude Law and Silvio Orlando reprising their roles alongside newcomer John Malkovich; it was filmed in 2018 and released in 2020.