YMMV / The Roman Mysteries

aka: The Roman Mysteries Series

• Narm: Pulchra's prank on Jonathan while in her bath house in the TV adaptation. She feigns sneaking a peek on him and he reacts accordingly, which would be understandable if he weren't wearing long pants which cover actually more of his privates than his usual attire.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Gladiators from Capua provides a remarkably accurate description of the executions and contests in the Flavian Amphitheater, to include children being killed by wild animals. Perhaps not too bad for adults that have been jaded by watching things like Gladiator, but for little kids it could be a bit much.
• Retroactive Recognition: Mark Benton as Floridius, ten years before his starring role in Shakespeare & Hathaway - Private Investigators.
• Squick: The Values Dissonance of accurately depicting first-century Roman marriage customs and ideas about sexual maturity sometimes results in some otherwise entirely positively-portrayed relationships having some pretty weird undertones to a modern reader - this is most jarring when it comes to Gaius Flavius Geminus (early 30s at youngest) and Miriam (14) at the time of their marriage, but there's also Flavia and Flaccus apparently beginning to develop feelings for each other when she is 11 and he is 18 or 19 and Nubia ending up with her teacher, Aristo.
• Toy Ship: Lupus and Clio, who become extremely close during The Secrets of Vesuvius.
• The Woobie: Good lord, almost all the main characters and many of the secondary characters qualify.
  • Nubia stands out as the most compassionate and selfless character in the series while carrying the scars of losing her entire family, being captured by Venalicius and sold into slavery.
  • Lupus starts out as a hardened, mistrustful Jerkass Woobie as his parents were killed in front of him, his tongue was cut out and he was forced to become a beggar in order to survive.
  • Jonathan starts out alright despite his Missing Mum, but upgrades to Woobie status. His attempts to reunite his parents lead to him believing he's responsible for killing 20,000 people which he never forgives himself for and considers suicide more than once. To top it off his parents aren't really happy anyway and his sister dies leaving him to pick up the pieces of his broken family.
  • Gaius, Flavia's uncle: the woman he loved married his twin brother, he remained unmarried for years, lost all his home and savings in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and though he finally fell in love again, he had less than a year with his wife before she died in childbirth.