Rome

A couple of weeks ago I bought Murray "Rome" on DVD for his birthday. He finished watching it in about a week, and raved about it. So I decided to borrow it back from him and give it a go. (For my more cynical readers, I didn't just buy it for him because I wanted to watch it myself. Although that's not a bad idea).


Normally I'm not a big fan of period movies/tv shows - I don't like anything that is set more than 20 years in the future or more than 20 years in the past. Which rules out anything that involves either space ships, or dragons. This seems like it might be different though. To start off with, it was made by HBO. By my count, six of the top ten shows ever made were made by HBO - The Sopranos, Deadwood, Entourage, The Larry Sanders Show, Extras, and The Wire*. Of course they also gave us Sex and the City and almost ten years of Sarah Jessica Parker, but everyone makes mistakes. Also despite it being set in ancient times, there don't seem to be any elves or hobbits involved.

I watched the first episode last night, and it was pretty good. It was kind of hard to understand who was who, as a lot of the characters wore white togas. The fact that you're aware of some of them - Julius Caesar, Brutus, Marc Antony - by name if not anything else makes it a bit easier to follow. I'll stick with it for a few episodes at least, and who knows, I might even learn something.

*The remaining four being The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The Office and The West Wing.