HBO Rome: The strangest historical drama I have ever watched
Jayden Leung
HBO Rome is an historical drama from 2005 which features 2 seasons and hour long episodes. As you would imagine, it’s not available for streaming and can only be watched on DVD. It follows the lives of Roman citizens from soldiers to socialites during the time when the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. A fellow history nerd suggested this show for me and it was unique to say the least.
Warning for readers, this show is R-Rated and this review does discuss some mature themes.
The best part of the show is the set design. CGI technology was far less advanced in the early 2000s than today, so rendering most of the show in CGI would make the whole show look like a multi-hour video game cutscene. All the props and costumes were meticulously designed with critics praising the show’s historical accuracy. Massive set pieces had to be built too, including an entire mock public square. This was reflected in it being one of the most expensive TV shows ever made. It cost not 1, not 2, but, 10 million dollars on average per episode. The real life props are definitely appreciated as they make the series more grounded. It’s nice to see chat takers interact with their surroundings as they would in real life. No hero jumping between exploding buildings while grabbing another character in mid-air. The show's budget was ultimately its downfall, as season 2 was cut short due to budget overruns.
The character development is something you could get invested in too. The actors succeed in making the characters appear like real people. The dialogue is witty and true to life. I particularly enjoyed the story of the main characters: stoic Lucius Vorennus and his hot-headed friend, Titus Pullo. Their misadventures and constant bickering are as funny as they are intriguing. It’s satisfying to see them develop from rivals who are annoyed with each other to friends who lean on each other during the harshest of times. The show is also great at foreshadowing future developments, which keeps you hooked. You can see child Octavian already behaving like the meticulous and ruthless planner he becomes as an adult, or his mother Attia’s petty personal struggles foreshadowing how all of the characters rarely forgive past grievances.
Now onto the worse and more bizarre parts of this show. There are plenty of unexplainable plot holes. For example how the children of Lucius Vorennus hardly seem to age. Or, how Titus Pullo gets away with stealing Rome’s treasury and murdering someone in broad daylight without any consequences when found guilty. None of the characters even bring up these incidents later on in the show. Or how an 11 year old Octavian is somehow recognized by Caesar despite Caeser last seeing him when he was 3, due to Caesar being on a military campaign. These holes don’t ruin the plot, but they can be distracting.
It appears this historical drama attempts to be every genre at once. It tries to be a war, romance, drama, and comedy show at the same time. An ambitious goal to say the least. The main disadvantage of this is that lots of time is taken up by subplots I barely cared about. This can be done effectively when they are all linked to each other, but most of the subplots have nothing to do with each other and thus felt pointless to watch. Every episode featured these jarring tone whiplashes. You see hands being cut off in a battle scene surrounded by screams of dying soldiers followed by a kissing scene underscored by classical music.
This brings me to the other odd part. The constant sex scenes. I don’t remember there being an episode with less than 2 sex scenes. They were so gratuitously dumped throughout the show that a few minutes after watching season 1, I was able to predict when there would be sex scene. Whether all these sex scenes are good or bad depends on your tastes. I found them boring and pointless as they didn’t add anything to the plot and took up a lot of time.
Overall this show has many good, bad, and weird elements. It gets an average of three stars. However, your preferred genre will probably be a massive influence on how much you enjoy certain parts of this show.