Das römische Reich

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.

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.

Although this is tagged as a Documentary under Genre it is just a TV show. Any resemblance between this show and actual history is purely coincidental and no-one should use this show to inform anyone about any aspect of the Roman Empire or any of its inhabitants.

As a TV show it's entertaining, as an historical documentary it's junk.

I'm not really a history buff so I can't comment to the legitimacy of the reports, but I can say it's a fairly enjoyable docuseries. The re-enactments are good quality and add to the series, the interviews at least appear knowledgeable.

sadly another typical 'modern' docudrama with unnecessary acting to expand viewer reach. while the acting ls atrocious, at least they cast most actors close to contemporary descriptions. quite a few of the reviewers have commented ln actors looking like pornstars, along with 6 packs and being built. if they'd listened to the academics and not focused on something trivial, they'd have learned commodus was an athlete and in real life built. this doc has well explained academic commentary on a often criticized, yet rarely lectured about emperor. here, ignoring the sensationalized acting, we come away with an interesting chronicle of the emperor who began the downfall of rome. his father is often declared the last good emperor. while it'd save time to just read about commodus' failures, a new roman documentary is always worth it to history buffs. Senātus Populus que Rōmānus!