The Glory of HBO's ROME!!!!
I've spent the weekend incommunicada as far as the web is concerned, however I had the strange pleasure of catching up with quality TV I had lost within the last two years or so.
Yes, I'm kind of dizzy still, after all I just spent the weekend watching ROME Season I & II. Strange as it might be it pleased both the nerd and the pop culture aficionada in me.
Let's take something out of the way before I get all Virgil recounting the story. It is HBO... there will be gratuitous sex and drama on top of the drama. The biggest joke of it all will be the portrait of Atia, of whom historians know little except that she was perhaps a champion of virtue. Well, on this one Atia is a strange blend between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Paris Hilton...the course of action of the character, however, sets the story in such a way that for more than mere deja vu episodes, the Gaius-Julii of ancient Rome sort of parallel to another errr... more contemporary Italian family: The Corleone, but it is all a long, fun plot device that will guarantee the level of cunning, soft porn and plain vulgarity needed to capture the eye of the plebes...
All in all, it was an amazing, ambitious project with out doors filmed on location and painfully detailed reproduction ( the Forum alone is enough to take any one's breath away). The main characters are so well developed that you will be living and dying for them after the third installment or so. Ray Stevenson and Kevin McKidd portray Titus Pullo and Luscious Vorenus, a couple of soldiers actively serving with Julius Ceasar in the Legio XIII Gemina during the conquest of Gaul. It is trough their eyes that we get to know all characters both historical and fictional and the series of events that will lead to the inevitable downfall of the Republic and the rise of the the Emperors. While Luscious Vorenus is the paramount of soldierly duty, and carries most of the gravitas, Pullo will do his best to pair history and whoring for you all while being the nicest guy you will never want to cross.
As far as historic portrayal goes they got Caesar satisfyingly right and someone finally had the balls to present Mark Anthony as a bit of a man-whore that he was- although I must protest that Anthony is kept single for most of the series and involved with Atia of all characters, it is all forgiven by means of finally getting what Richard Burton couldn't give me: the quissentenial Roman soldier, fiercely loyal to Caesar to the point of entering a world of politics he completely despised... and the angst, oh the angst, and the passionate obsession are almost divine! Octavian as child is the taciturn yet resolute boy that you know will scheme his way to become a living god.
Anyhoo, whether if you are a nerd with a penchant for catching little historical facts, a purist who likes to fish for inaccuracies, an appreciative fan of ancient bacchanal rites or just someone who enjoys damn good TV, this one is a must.
