Thursday, November 03, 2005

The Empire Strikes Back!

A few things have annoyed me about the pre-amble puff for the BBC/HBO epic series Rome which started last night. So much so that I thought I may have to install my own vomitorium next to the telly when it began.

The first offenders have been the press/magazine industry who all seem to have thought it would be a jolly hoot to headline any feature on the series as No Place Like Rome. Geddit? Send for a medic to sew up my splitting sides… This proves one of my long-held theories that most journalists are utterly unimaginative and very lazy – or maybe just one dullard writes headlines for every paper and magazine on the planet. Could happen if Mr Murdoch gets his way…

It also shows how utterly they’ve missed the point of the show. The whole raison d’etre of Rome is that it’s a sex-obsessed culture of power and politics keen on foreign invasion which masks a world of squalor and sleaze – thus proving that there are several places like Rome (UK, US, etc) and how relevant the series supposedly is today.

The Beeb’s adverts for the show have also wound me up…

When the Beeb does something good it plugs it to death. Remember the clever ads for House Of Cards with Francis Urquhart talking direct to camera or the EastEnders ads surrounding the Steve Owen and Matthew Rose murder of Saskia Duncan? And they had a right to be smug because everybody was talking about it… But sometimes Auntie is so bloody smug showing off her latest baubles that you feel like mugging the old cow down a dark alley to bring her back to earth. And Auntie loves Rome and is shoving it under the nose of every viewer at every possible opportunity…

So how good is it? Well the answer is pretty good actually.

Kevin McKidd (Private Cooper in Dog Soldiers) plays a strait-laced soldier named Lucius, Kenneth Cranham looks every inch a sussed Roman politician in Pompey and James Purefoy looks to be having a hoot as the brash Mark Antony. The sets are stunning, the extras budget must have been huge and the script seems genuinely engaging. I even spotted Jez Quigley (actor Lee Boardman) from Corrie getting his leg over at one point as a horse salesman. It’s that bizarre but it also that good.

Probably...

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