Argh, I forgot to watch! Wonder if it's repeated...

On Sunday at 10.55- BBC 1.

Ta!

Yes, it is - Sunday night on Beeb 1.

Excellent.

Hinds' Caesar was OK by my book. Basically, the man was ruthlessly ambitious, and he'd drink with his men if necessary to advance that, but similarly put great stock by his personal prestige and status for the same reason.

I'm very much in agreement with your reaction, generally - especially your comparison with Gladiator, and the moral complexity of Pullo and Vorenus. I think we'll have a lot of fun watching how their relationship with one another develops.

The "heroes" usually turn out to the least engaging characters in this kind of costume drama, but Pullo and Vorenus are genuinely interesting.

Apparently, most of his men adored him and no woman was safe around him (and not several men as well).

There a passage somewhere- I think it must be in I, Claudius- which describes Caesar talking to his troops, cracking dirty jokes and making obscene gestures with a radish. I can't see Ciaran doing that.

He was also supposed to have had a homosexual liaison with some king, was it Mithridates or some such? Not really my era, I suppose I should pull out Suetonius and check.

Yes, I remember that one...

I don't suppose Suetonius is wholly trustworthy- but he's a damn good read.

Sort of the "News of the World" of his day.

Exactly....

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's in I, Claudius. I do wish my daughter would find my copy of it which she borrowed....

What is this show called? I'm going to see if I can find it on Netflix.

It's simply called Rome.

It may be a little early to find it on Netflix as it's only just debuted on TV. It's a collaboration between HBO and the BBC.

In that case it will probably be on HBO eventually, which I'm going to have for at least six months starting Nov. 14. Huzzah.

A bit of checking reveals that I can save it on my Netflix queue for when it comes out on DVD and I am given to understand that it is already playing on HBO.

Joy.

Excellent.

I think you'll enjoy it.

I like it a lot, myself - and the pullo and varenus characters really seem to grow in warmth and complexity as the series goes on (at first I thought, oh great, it's another 'good cop bad cop' cliche pairing). I also like the way they've tried to make roman religion a big part of it - as well as the slavery and class systems, and whereas it might not be entirely accurate, it does at least make the period seem strange, which is what so many historical films fail to do.

I very much liked the glimpses we got of Roman religion. Yes, there seems to be an attempt to give us the whole of Roman society- from top to bottom- with no shirking the stuff that's seriously odd and alien. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the story develops.

I think it's by far the best thing I've seen about Rome. Pullo and Varenus are certainly triff, I like Niobe's unconscious vulgarity, and I worry about Brutus, he's so obviously constipated from overthinking everything. I don't care for one or two of the casting choices, but it's chock full of superb actors. The writing is very strong, too; you wouldn't especially notice that the director changes every week unless you watched the credits.

They keep changing directors? That's a shame- but it's probably unrealistic to expect one person to manage the workload. I noticed that the first episode was directed by Michael Apted- a British veteran with some real movies to his credit.

They've got four, I believe, on a rotating schedule. It works very well!

Creating something on this scale (13 hours of epic TV) must be one hell of an undertaking.

yah they`re up to like epsiode 9 or something in the states.

suetonius, god! that was torture in latin class. divus augustus, interminable, senseless, convoluted, translation-homework-copying-from-the-puffin-translation-rather-than-do-yourself vocabulary ridden gumph! perhaps reading it already translated, that might be better.

i wanna see more grandure in ROME. yah they built all that stuff, but they aren`t showcasing it. i want some huge aerial views, a bit more scope in the direction. i want to get the feeling of empire, as well as of a big city. but hell, i don`t even get that. ROMe is huge, but the forum they have built seems pretty claustrophobic. i was thinking it was at least a couple of soccer fields big. maybe i was wrong. that`s what i wanted tho. just- more height, scale, size, etc...

but yah it`s fun. pullo starts off crap-acting i felt, but he`s getting better.

I like Pullo. He seems like a real soldier to me- a real, honest to goodness grunt.

I suspect the reconstruction of the forum is accurate. I've been to the Roman forum- many years ago with your ma- and the scale isn't spectacular. I think we've been spoiled by epic movies of the past into believing classical Rome was huge and gleaming when in fact it was small and grungey.