Roman Empire

Expected better quality from a Netflix-backed series. C-list actors that look like porn stars, strange sound design,and borrows clips from other recent documentaries. It's Boring to watch even with Sean Bean's narration and weird game of thrones-esque dry humps.I've only given the series a brief chance but the content is not engaging enough. BBC docudramas from 10 years ago feel more authentic and more informative than this series. Hardcore history and Rome buffs you won't miss much by passing on this.

If you can keep yourself from dozing off during the 'acting' and want some uncommon tidbits of information on the life of Commodus it may be enough to watch the series to the end.

At first I thought this gives game of thrones a run for its money and I wondered why people gave it bad reviews. It seemed normal people give it 1 for not being more exciting while history buffs give it 1 for not being historically accurate. I don't care if they added in a vase, good looking women, or a mountain since going into this show you need to understand its going to take some liberties. If you think it's boring than I doubt there is any version of this that could make you happy. What made me not like it as much is after watching the first episode where they had history experts on and built up this whole thing complaining about commodus being a untrained loser is the fact that he was only 13 years old at the time! The part is being played by a 28 year old man! It's much harder to blame a 13 year old not being ready to be the king of Rome than it is a 28y/o man. Also Commodus's mother either got some sickness and died or committed suicide. The show makes it look like the king killed her with wine. Historically there doesn't seem to be anything to back that up and some people disagree that she even had anything to do with the uprising. After not even hearing the alternate views of these events where Netflix seemed to choose the most extreme version for extra hype this really is making me skeptical about the rest of this show.

Ok, so after watching season one and starting season 2, I have a few nitpicks.

Even though the story of the first season was amazing. Of course, it did help that it might be the most interesting emperor of all time, and despite all the bad things I'm gonna write here, the sets of the actual important story elements looked and were quite good.

So, firstly, I must say, the battles they show in the beginning of S2, with scesar, were very inaccurate. Romans fought in organised lines and formations.definitely not in a large battle, without shields in a huge chaos of 1on1 fights. I mean, it's the minimum. You get experts, which aren't so insightful to be frank, and sell this to me as a almost science docu and get that wrong? Idk.

So yeah. Like I said in the title, for some reason all the long shots are weirdly bad In a way that just doesn't make any sense, In any context.

I mean, the regular scens look great, but you just feel your watching two different productions.

One made in India on Redmi 6a and the other, well, an actual film studio. It's confusing and got me really un immersed in scenes switching back and forth. There is litterly no reason. Put a stock photo instead. Anything. It's not complicated .You can get much better phootage in the 50s.

I don't get it.

It is generally entertaining, but the depictions and descriptions of the battlers are not accurate and miss some of the pivotal details. But worse is the depictions of Roman fighting style - Roman infantry fought in tight formations and stabbed with the Gladius! They really needed a military historian on this show. Instead you see Roman infantry hacking and slashing like some Hollywood depiction of ancient warfare - groan.

You have to really look at this show as fiction, not as historically accurate. Despite the talking head historians, this show is at best loosely based on history, playing up the more scandalous rumours and often just making things up.

That said, it's a fairly entertaining watch. Nothing incredible, but kind of a bored-on-a-rainy-Sunday kind of deal.