Rome Review

The masterstroke is the two centurions. By anchoring the political story to Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, an austere believer and a cheerful thug who keep blundering into history, the series gets to show the Republic from the bottom as well as the top, and Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson make the friendship completely convincing. The world building is the other achievement. This is a Rome of painted statues, graffiti, street shrines, curse tablets and a town crier reading the news, which is far closer to the archaeology than the marble version most productions use.

Ciarán Hinds is a superb Caesar, and Polly Walker's Atia is one of the great television villains, monstrous and hilarious in the same line. The budget killed it. Cancelled during the second season's production, the writers had to compress years of civil war into ten hours, so events that deserved seasons arrive as summary, alliances shift in single scenes, and the ending, while it works, plainly belongs to a longer show.