Rome

[Docbrown777]

How did I ever miss this tv series? I've only recently started watching episodes from the first season. This is really good stuff.

I especially like the relationship between the two Roman soldiers.

It sure is chock full of nakedness though.

 

[Rii]

Another fan here; pity we weren't able to get more than two seasons.

It sure is chock full of nakedness though.

You say this as if it's a bad thing.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

It's a fun show. It was insanely expensive to produce, but the production was the best of any Rome-era thing ever.

 

[Shurik]

It was insanely expensive to produce

That was the main reason the show was canceled after 2 seasons.

It's a great show from every possible point of view.

 

[Mr Darcy]

I wish there had been a third season.

 

[FPAlpha]

13!!!

That has become sort of a catchphrase around here whenever this number comes up somewhere

Awesome show and a shame it didn't go past 2 seasons.

 

[DarKush]

Great show. I recently rewatched it. The first time I felt that Season 2 was a bit rushed because they had to cover so much territory. But I didn't mind it the second time around. Also recommend accessing the "All Roads lead to Rome" feature. It really gave me a lot of info on Roman culture and on some of the characters.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I liked it, but unlike most people (I think), I found the actual historical characters more interesting than the common folk. So two seasons covered the story just fine for me.

We need more historical drama on TV, with attempts at historical accuracy, not crap like The Tudors.

 

[stj]

Polly Walker naked in a shower of bull's blood was silly if you know anything at all about Mithraism.

The background details are even more accurate than the historical plots, including things like the play version of Vorenus saving Pullo from execution, or the poor characters using candles and the rich using lamps. It gives the series a real impact.

The historical details are fair, except for the women. Cleopatra is an absurdity. Atia is a fun character but it is about as certain as can be that Augustus got his later life prissiness and ostentatious piety from Mommy.

Vorenus and Pullo are fairly well done but they are pretty much dark and gritty cliches in the typical foolish character arc. They're like McNulty or Omar in The Wire, glorified comic book characters stuck into an almost realistic drama. Max Pirkis is replaced in the second season as Augustus. His replacement is very much like the real Augustus as near as I can tell, and not much fun at all.

One of the series' linch pins, Bruno Heller, is the main man behind The Mentalist.

 

[Whofan]

^Rome isn't that accurate either, really. Especially with regards to Augustus's mother, who is clearly an attempt by the series to replicate the evil queen Liva from I, Claudius. (Livia herself appears towards the end of Rome)

As for I Claudius (Which Rome fans should at least check out), it deals in part with the later years of Augustus's reign and the Emperors that followed.

Be warned though, it's an older BBC production and is shot entirely on set and in video, so it's very different than Rome. It plays more like theather. But it's got a lot of good actors-including Patrick Stewart as Sirjanus.

 

[Shurik]

I liked it, but unlike most people (I think), I found the actual historical characters more interesting than the common folk. So two seasons covered the story just fine for me.

We need more historical drama on TV, with attempts at historical accuracy, not crap like The Tudors.

Rome's historical accuracy wasn't that great either. Obviously, far less is known about that period than about Henry VIII's England, but from what is known - Rome's Atia is more or less the opposite of the real Atia (and she didn't survive till after the battle of Actium), the show doesn't mention that Livia wasn't Octavian's first wife and that he had a daughter by the time he married Livia, the civil war that Ceasar started was much more complicated than it was shown and so on ...

 

[Holdfast]

Pretty good series and the production values are great. Well worth watching.

As for "historical accuracy"; it's a TV show. Don't go into it expecting all the characters to be true to their historical counterparts. But enough are recognisable not to offend anyone who knows a little bit more.

 

[stj]

Is the glass half empty or half full? Rome's historical accuracy is fair, as I see it, which has to be taken in Hollywood context, a state of mind which can write Custer as charging into the valley of the Little Bighorn to save the Indians. One of the most bizarre things was omitting to note that Servilia was Cato's half-sister! As I said, none of the women are done right. That special scene between Octavia and Octavian is another instance.

By contrast, the allegations that Caesar had a sexual relationship with Octavian are rationalized as misinterpretation of an epileptic fit. Caesar is robustly hetero in Rome. He may indeed have been wholly hetero, but the paucity of children attributed to Caesar is striking. (No, Brutus doesn't count, the dates are wrong.)

The true historical accuracy is in the background, the social ambience. That really is outstanding.

 

[TheGodBen]

Rome is a guilty pleasure; it has excessive nudity, over-the-top violence and questionable historical accuracy, but it looks fantastic and it's bloody good fun. And who isn't moved by the bromance of Pullo and Vorenus?

 

[Admiral Shran]

The only thing I didn't like about the show was how they dealt with Atia at the end of season two. Up until then she was a character that had done nothing to garner any sympathy.

She....

Spoiler: Atia

1.) used her two children to further her political ambitions
2.) had her son-in-law murdered in cold blood
3.) prostituted her daughter
4.) prostituted herself
5.) forced her son to "use the services" of a prostitute against his will
6.) extorted massive amounts of money from the Roman public
7.) distributed pornographic material in order to harm a rival
8.) hired men to strip naked, beat, and humiliate said rival in a public street
9.) kidnaped and tortured said rival
10.) allowed her daughter to be prostituted again
11.) had an affair with another of her son-in-laws
12.) had one of her daughter's friends raped simply because she didn't like that the girl was from a lower social/economic class
13.) had said friend's father murdered in cold blood for the same reason
14.) publicly humiliated her daughter-in-law.

Then, all of the sudden, the show tries to get us to feel sorry for her because she didn't end up with Antony.

HMMMM... sorry, I feel no sympathy for this woman simply because she didn't end up with the man of her dreams. If they had kept her as an unsympathic character, I would have enjoyed it more.

But, other than that, an excellent series.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I liked it, but unlike most people (I think), I found the actual historical characters more interesting than the common folk. So two seasons covered the story just fine for me.

We need more historical drama on TV, with attempts at historical accuracy, not crap like The Tudors.

Rome's historical accuracy wasn't that great either. Obviously, far less is known about that period than about Henry VIII's England, but from what is known - Rome's Atia is more or less the opposite of the real Atia (and she didn't survive till after the battle of Actium), the show doesn't mention that Livia wasn't Octavian's first wife and that he had a daughter by the time he married Livia, the civil war that Ceasar started was much more complicated than it was shown and so on ...

Not to mention the timeline is compressed as hell.

That being said, I feel like it has the spirit of what Rome would have felt like, even if the facts weren't perfect. Certainly, the sets were great at a minimum and Ancient Rome felt so alive.

 

[DevilEyes]

Rome is a guilty pleasure; it has excessive nudity, over-the-top violence and questionable historical accuracy, but it looks fantastic and it's bloody good fun. And who isn't moved by the bromance of Pullo and Vorenus?

Yeah. But it's also a good drama. Historically inaccurate, but still good HBO drama.

But also has to be said that, once you get past the fact that I, Claudius has so many Shakespearean actors, that it's shot in the 1970s British style (so it looks a bit like theatre) and that all those British actors in it use RP accents , that show has at least as much, if not more, sex and over-the-top violence, (even if not as explicit), elaborate intrigue, cruelty, incest, child abuse, psychotic murderers, and all sorts of other stuff, to the extent that puts every soap opera to shame. For all the explicit violence in Rome, none of it comes close to the effect of that chilling, creepy scene at the end of one of the episodes of I, Claudius, when

Spoiler: Caligula, of course

cutting from the a scene between Caligula (rambling about gods eating their children) and his drunken pregnant sister/wife Drusilla, we just hear a horrific female scream, and then we see the trembling, dismayed John Hurt (Caligula) opening the door with his mouth bloody, and telling uncle Claudius not to go there.

 

[Whofan]

I heard that scene was even suppossed to be more nasty, but they changed it. The imagination of the scene is actually more horrifying than seeing it, anyway.

 

[Shurik]

This scene wasn't in the book, BTW, but it makes sense in light of other stuff that the book tells about Caligula's reign. He's even more batshit insane in the book ...

 

[stj]

I, Claudius is mostly Robert Graves somewhat indiscriminately mining Suetonius and some Tacitus. The chances that some of these stories are as fictional as, say, Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake," are very high.

For instance, the whole notion that Augustus was a nice old man is exceedingly unlikely. Rome has done a much better job in capturing a historically probable picture of Augustus.

The notion of Livia as some diabolical, monstrous intriguer is likely influenced by misogyny.

Graves assumes that Tiberius' retirement to Greece was just a ploy in the struggle for the succession. This is improbable, first because absence has rarely been a desirable thing in court intrigues. But, second, since Tiberius retired again (to Capri) when he Emperor, it is very likely that Tiberius on some level did not want to be Emperor at all.

Graves' contrarian bent sometimes serves him well, but other times it does not. He minimizes the slaughter subsequent to the discovery of Messalina. But when Tiberius' slaughter after the discovery of Sejanus' treachery which including the poisoning of Tiberius' son (correctly, it seems) is portrayed as a horror. Personally going apeshit on people after you find out your son was murdered is more understandable than killing bunches of people because you find out your wife is a slut.

As Graves' crankish extremes in mythological interpretation show, he lacks judgment. There was a highly respected Senator who was a close friend of Tiberius, and even lived on Capri as well. Being highly respected, since he did not confirm the lurid stories about Tiberius, Suetonius et al. blandly explained that Tiberius (somehow) fooled him. Graves' Claudius just hints that the friend knew perfectly well what Tiberius up to (which is almost certainly true,) but that he lied. The simpler explanation, that the friend was telling the truth, that Tiberius wasn't up to grotesque sex play with children isn't even conceivable.

Inasmuch as no alleged partner of Tiberius ever had a name or parlayed the connection into money or used influence against a Senator, unlike other alleged paramours of emperors, the probablilty is that the allegations are falsehoods. The Senators hated Tiberius because of his informers (a good reason, after all,) and his stinginess with public funds (a matter of perspective.) It's like people who hate Obama convincing themselves he's a Muslim.

The numerous imperfections of Rome's history are just not in the same category, I think.