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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Rome Series 1

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05:23 / 14.11.05

Kieth, if you are not a broadcast design nerd, you deserve a prize.

the same company, a52 did both the carnivale and the rome open. this is the reason i find the rome open so disapointing. not to mention the inferior motion blur!

re: tonights new episode,

ho lee fuck.

THIRTEEN!!!

Keith, like a scientist

12:32 / 14.11.05

I figured it was the same company (where's my prize? I'm a print designer).

No kidding about last night's episode. That was one hell of a climax there. Easily the most brutal I've seen on that show. I was sharing in Vorenus nail-biting there.

So, it really does appear that they are getting to the demise of Julius next week, aren't they? I don't know my history well, how long was his rule, actually? I can't be sure, but I would say that no more than a year has passed in the space of the show's season. Am I totally off?

13:24 / 14.11.05

wait a minute, print designer? i don't know about that prize now

i was completely surprised by the level of brutality in that fight scene. it was great!

it does look like ceasar is about to bite it. i loved the thick-running corruption in that episode. but i think it's been longer than a year, much longer possibly. i forget the actual lines, but there was reference to octavius being away at school for a long time, as well as the campaign that saw vorenus and pullo shipwrecked. i think niobe said that he was gone for three years.

their website could be very well served by a timeline.

A fall of geckos

13:27 / 14.11.05

"I can't be sure, but I would say that no more than a year has passed in the space of the show's season. Am I totally off?"

Well off, though I can see why you would think that. I think the Civil War (pre-Egypt) was supposed to be about 2 years from things they've said in the episodes. Which makes sense, as it would take quite a time just moving the armies around Europe.

We know Caesar's troops spent at least 9 month in Egypt (birth of Caesarion). Plus travelling to and from Egypt - I think this was around about 2 years overall.

This all fits the historical timeline - beginning of the civil was was 50bc, Caesar returned to Rome in September 45bc. I think he was dead before the end of the following year.

I think that of the problem with tracing the time-line of this series is the way it mixes huge political events (which are obviously chronologically distant from each other) with personal events which appear to run together.

Keith, like a scientist

15:46 / 14.11.05

Ah, thank you for that, that helps a lot. I am very unfamiliar with that era in history. They should really think about adding some dates to the beginning of episodes.

21:50 / 18.12.05

I've been watching this show for five whole minutes, and nobody's got their kit off yet.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, what the bleeding hell is the point?

22:22 / 18.12.05

Have no fear, they shoved all the sex in the middle this week, Alex...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:25 / 22.12.05

I'm about three weeks behind (the episode I just watched ends with Pompey getting what's coming to him) so can I just say hott intergenerational lesbo acktion!!1!

I don't know, I'm still in two minds about this, mainly because the Carry On Up Titus Pullo stuff is great, the political stuff is interesting but the jockeying for power of the wives back in Rome is dull as ditchwater. It's every soap that's ever been made ever and, as I assume that the show is trying to stick to the historical record they can scheme and plot but it won't matter much at the end of the day.

I do like the device of having Ian Macniece reading the headlines each episode to remind everyone what's going on. Much better than 'Previously on Rome', though they still do that too.

And I, Claudius did rock, it's official. To complain about hamminess is like going to a pantomime and complaining that Widow Twanky is a bloke and the principle boy is actually that girl who used to be in that soap, you know, wossername? If you Torrent, you can download the Drama Connections show that was on BBC1 a few weeks ago from UKNova.

Tryphena Absent

09:46 / 22.12.05

I want more killing.

Is that wrong?

13:12 / 05.01.06

well, you got it. i was only ever watching rome in a 'lost's on soon' kinda way, and playing the dynasty game during the boring bits ('that one's alexis, no THAT one's alexis, and that one's kristle')

but that fight last night was the bloodiest, ballsiest bit of ak-shun that i've ever seen outside 'the movies', with brilliant impalings, severed limbs, severed heads, and a guy getting his own battle club thing shoved pointy-end first right down through his shoulder into his chest - complete with classic eighties action movie appeals to my non-existent sense of fealty to my regiment.

the main point of this show, far as i can see, was to sit and say 'so is it going to end with him him shaking his fist and going 'you and all brutus?'', which, as it turned out, he never. originaliteh.

Tryphena Absent

13:23 / 05.01.06

I vastly enjoyed that. The killing was bloody. Ah yes. But poor old Viridianass, or however you spell his name.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:46 / 05.01.06

I have loved this series. And yes, Titus Pullo yelling "Thirteen!", and Lucius Vorenus going into the arena, was all heart-stopping, lip-trembling, it's-just-something-in-my-eye stuff. They've been a great double act all the way through, really - only reason I never posted about it here was that there didn't seem to be the demand for a separate thread and I was avoiding spoilers.

I've loved Vorenus' clipped repressed GRRR! ("Do not SPEAK of my WIFE!") and Pullo's cheerful brutishness. And Ciaran Hines has been great.

"My intentions are entirely for the good of Rome." Are vey, Caesar?

Roll on season two and Octavian pwning everyone.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:13 / 05.01.06

and that dark haired english hottie is absolutely fuckingtastically gorgeous. (married to trainspotting guy).

enjoyed this, when I caught it.

I'm hoping theres gonna be a major repeat session soon so I can fall into it properly.

man, there had better be.

19:58 / 05.01.06

What a belter of a finale. Pullo and Vorenus in the arena was great! Legs sliced off, heads cut off, one big ugly bloke was kebabed. Yay! Just because Nina asked for more violence too. How powerful is she?

Can't wait for the next one. Fine as Ciaran Hinds was as Caesar, next series will be all about James Lovely, Lovely Purefoy and his doomed affair with clever, cunning Cleopatra. And Octavian goes around the Med asking, Who's the Daddy?. w00t! Eheu, even!

lord nuneaton savage

09:52 / 06.01.06

Some fantastic catchphrases from the series as well. Particularly liked; "As hot as Vulcan's cock". Shall endevour to use it in more conversations.

And yeah, the fight at the end; WOAH.

09:55 / 06.01.06

Like Yawn, I hope they do another pass, otherwise it looks like Limewire for me.

12:32 / 06.01.06

Great last episode, Pullo has been the most interesting character in many ways, and that fight scene was amazing, slicing someones head off with a shield, damn, shits all over that time craig punched paul outside lassiters on Neighbours...

The death of Caesar was very well acted. Will season two go the route of having Octavian and Anthony go at the plotters together and then fight, or just go with the first half of their story? They both really got across a great sense of 'you lot are in big trouble' with their glances (Oct to Brutus' mum, Anthony to the senate). Fantastic end to what has been the only series that I have watched regularly all year. Is it really going to be 2007 and before the next series though?

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:35 / 06.01.06

Yes, but the good news is that Ray Stevenson has signed up for five more years of Titus Pulling.

The second series doesn't go into production until March. This, at least, will give Max Pirkis the change to age a bit (although he does bloody well for a 16 year-old as it is).

14:18 / 06.01.06

Supurb. Did Lepidus make an appearence, or is he to come in later?

22:48 / 06.01.06

Yeah, the Caesar death scene was well handled, BennyTB. Muddle, seemed to start at random and all these shocked senators clumsily taking their turns. Brutus agog and shit-scared until finally exhorted sufficiently to make a decisive move. Then they all stand around in the otherwise emptied senate, lost for their next move. Could not have been further from Bill Shakespeare's tidily heroic version.

Great to see Servilia taking Atia in her pincers and threatening long, slow torture ahead. All the more marvellous for knowing how that will play out.

Great tv. More, more!

Jack The Bodiless

00:38 / 07.01.06

What a great fucking series. I am deeply in love with Vorenus and Pullo (shall we just rename this show the Titus Pullo Show and get it over with?).

D Terminator XXXIII

13:29 / 05.10.06

Maybe we should. Just the two of us. He's deeply, deeply sexy in all the right ways that were wrong for Crowe in that overblown film of his.

I'm on the 4th episode now and I'm hooked. The episodes prior to it were entertaining and mostly excellent but there was something about the 4th that was just... Right. In the sense that it was how it should be. No excess bland. From beginning 'til the end. Plus, I'm usually a sucker for a series that with a single shot - in this instance, the closing shot of the sea - manages to say so many things with such economy.

Is it wise to invest in the box set? Can it bear repeated views?

yawn - thing's buddy

12:17 / 11.12.06

ahhh, boxed set.

yessssssssssssssssss.

can't beleive I didn't watch this properly when it was on.

it really is fantastic!

Can they do 'Istanbul' next?

Want the same treatment for Suleyman the Magnificent and the rest.

17:53 / 11.12.06

Anyone know if there's any truth to the rumour that they're stoping after season 2 as its too expensive to make?

yawn - thing's buddy

07:32 / 12.12.06

that'd be a shame. seen the first five now and yes, this is one fine series.

Octavian has to be one of the best tv characters ever . . . (yes, I know he's historically real too)

the torture scene as mentioned already, really is entertaining; as is pullo in general.

and that guy who plays Caesar, IS Caesar.

I love it!

07:52 / 12.12.06

there's info up on the HBO site, listing for the second series is in place. Mr Purefoy said that he is signed up for five years, but as this is standard tv practice I don't think it counts for much.

07:53 / 12.12.06

Anyone know if there's any truth to the rumour that they're stoping after season 2 as its too expensive to make?

Apparently. However Season 2 sounds like it's going to be a blast. It's Anthony and Cleopatra, with added Pullo hilarity.

Although, re-watching on dvd at the moment, I do hope Attia is in the mix as well.

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