Ehh, I liked it well enough and the acting is pure brilliance but the historical inaccuracies come fast and furious, particularly in season two and the pacing is rushed very badly. You'll have to watch the series in full to get what I mean but let's just say that certain charcters don't age particularly well over the course of 30 years...or at all really.
Yeah the Pacing for Me was the problem, it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a Sopranos style show set in ancient Rome or a Historical Drama, so the pacing for several plots was dropped to focus on historical events
I loved the show though, the acting/Characters and Production Vales were all amazing
Humour, where would we be without it? In Germany, probably![]()
Based on what I'm reading, they changed around the events quite a bit.
I'm not actually that concerned about the changing around of the events. The sad thing about real life is that it seldom translates well into a story, so often it must be changed around for optimal storytelling.
I'll see when I see more of this show.
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.It's a great show. The historical inaccuracies don't annoy me — though it amuses me no end that one episode towards the end of the show's run condenses what has to be a couple of year's drama into what seems like an afternoon. It's well acted, looks nice, has beautiful music (JEFF BEAL COME BACK! DO MORE SHOWS!) and has that fucking awesome Newsreader guy.
(Who somehow even makes it into the credits by the end of the show.)
Oh. And naked James Purefory. Sweet loving Jesus, yes.
This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.See what I mean? If they pushed two years' events into one episode without shortening said years, there would be no room for characterization, and what makes a story good is its characters—how they're written, how they act, and how they interest and entertain the viewer.
The pacing would also be awkward.
No, the kind of historical inaccuracy that bothers me more is changing, ommitting or displacing details about the setting and time period—for example, putting horns and wings on Viking helms, or giving Renaissance women modern corsets, or putting tomatoes and potatoes in food of the middle ages.
edited 18th Apr '11 4:21:06 PM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.![]()
Oh, the episode I'm thinking of is largely character driven. (It's the second last one, where Antony finally dumps both Atia and Octavia for Cleopatra. It's a great episode, but it has to cover the grain shortages, Antony's intergration into the Egyptian Court and slide into decadence and decay, and the events leading up to open war between the Egyptian and Roman courts. Plus Octavian's marriage to Livia, and a few other things.
It's a testament to the writing that it manages to be so character focused, and driven. And it's really funny to boot (guess that's what happens when it's written by a member of Mutant Enemy.) But the way it's structured makes it seem like a couple of the characters managed to travel from Rome to Egypt in a few hours, not months.
This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.Just finished the first season of Rome, and man.
I originally thought that the fact that Lucius's actor was blond was a detail the guys working on the series overlooked, but turns out it's actually tied in to the character: he looks foreign because he is.
edited 30th Apr '11 11:53:38 AM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.![]()
Yes but they were fairly rare and the hair color was unpopular anyway, like dark hair in Scandinavia.
If I recall correctly, Lucius's origins were briefly discussed—either he's foreign himself or he's immediately descended from foreigners. Never mind, I misinterpreted Etruria as being foreign; it is part of Italy.
Regardless, my point is that they notice his unusual appearance because he is insulted by being called a "ginger pleb", and his hair color is exaggerated in the play in which his character appears.
Yes, it did struck me as odd that Niobe's baby suddenly became a 4-year-old while Octavian hardly aged a day.
edited 30th Apr '11 7:37:00 PM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.Yeah, but Octavian ends up becoming an adult while *spoilers for later on*Vorenus' kids look and are referred to as children even by the time they should all be adults.
But this series has really good characters. The fact that they portray their culture and values as being so brutal and different but still have them be sympathetic shows how good the writers are.
edited 30th Apr '11 9:39:57 PM by SilentColossus
That's a very clever strategy of Octavian's to do all of his operations in the civil war behind a double while he hides safely elsewhere. Why, he's even fooled Pullo!
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.I, Claudius is one of my favourite series ever. How does Rome compare to it?
"Doctor Who means never having to say you're kidding." - BocajI woudn't know. I never watched it.
Rome is awesome though, and without any glaring inaccuracies in the presentation of the time period. Historical events are mucked around with though, but to good effect. There's already a discussion in this thread as to why.
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.![]()
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Well, Rome and I, Claudius are two very different sorts of shows. Being a 1970's British television production, I Claudius is long on dialogue and short on action and blood. There is some sex and violence of course but very little nudity and nothing like the type of action sequences you get in Rome. That having been said, I think the storyline is much better in I, Claudius and the plot doesn't meander around like it does with Rome. The acting in both shows is about the same-first rate.
Rome is well filmed, but not like BBC productions were filmed in the 70's. But you'd expect that. The writing's not as great — and again, you'd expect that. I, Claudius is a marvel. In comparison to I, Claudius Rome can seem gratuitous, but it's still worth watching.
That said, Rome is very good at what it does, and was more often than not excellent television. It also flows well into I, Claudius, and feels like Claudius's looser younger brother, which is appropriate given how Augustus views his past. Octavian/Augustus are portrayed firly differently though.
This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.I just rewatched the series six years after the first time I watched it, and it's still brilliant. The acting is great, especially James Purefoy as Mark Antony and Polly Walker as Atia. The story is interesting—I'm a sucker for clever scheming by multiple parties interacting in intricate ways—but the characters are really what makes the show great. The character drama is helped quite a bit by the Deliberate Values Dissonance and Grey-and-Gray Morality (borderline Blue-and-Orange Morality, really) at play; because I can understand, but don't agree with, the morals the characters (and I mean all the characters – there is no moral Audience Surrogate) live by and never get the impression that I'm supposed to root for any particular faction, I'm constantly conflicted about how to feel about the events that transpire. This results in a veritable gold mine of Alternative Character Interpretation; all the major players display both sympathetic and thoroughly unsympathetic sides, and any attempt to tally it all up to decide whether they are "good" or "bad" would be an exercise in futility. I was a bit taken aback by how extremely unsavoury a character I found Lucius Vorenus to be upon second viewing, as I don't recall feeling that way the first time I watched the show, and that is to me a sign that the character writing is good.
Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.I think this show is not something to do for actual history but I think it's a fairly good example of how to give someone a feel for ancient Rome's differing values and attitudes. The irony being of course that Lucius trying to be Lawful Good for his time results in him being Lawful Evil and Pullo's psychotic deranged berserker qualities are mostly eccentricities as long as he's either directing them at slaves or has the protection of a noble family.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

annebeeche why are you looping a 1:45 song over and over
Anyway, just started watching this 2-season series about the civil war between Pompey and Julius which is made of BAMF and awesome and possibly goat testicles.
Dodges the common pitfall of historically accurate historical fiction beautifully with amusing and interesting characters that have even more interesting relationships with each other.
I know little of Rome, so I have no say on the matter, but apparently the series follows both the history and culture of its setting very accurately (with some changes to the events for the sake of characterization, apparently). It also presents a rather gritty and dirty reconstruction of Rome.
Side-pinned cloaks, puttees, fucking, random blonde dude (Lucius Vorenus), near-naked blue Gauls, frayed seams, those silly "barbarians", fucking, scant dye, slaves with large gift-wrapped penises, budding young jailbait boys, abusive mothers, fucking, human rafts, blood-spattering religious sacrifices, uniformed senators and goat testicles galore.
I'm on like season 1 episode 7 right now, so I'm far from finished with it.
edited 17th Apr '11 4:57:04 AM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.