Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit

Very thought-provoking and personal analysis on what Rome was and meant. This is Mary Beard's show: she's not just presenting it, and it shows in the joined-up thinking, sustained arguments and overall thesis. The antithesis of those annoying History Channel 'docs' that give you content by the teaspoon mixed in which visuals/filler by the bucketload, and from which anything that might be construed as an 'opinion' has been carefully sifted out.

An okay series but I thought there other one focusing much more on the social history, while quite unstructured was more revealing and better presented.

Here it's like Mary Beard is teaching a group of 9 year olds. It really is talking down to the viewer. She's unable to explain to us how the roman empire was divided up without showing us a pizza so we'll understand.

The story of an empire partly brought down by waves of migrants and refuges possibly doesn't sit well with a Jeremy Corbyn supporter unsurprisingly. The Huns also get just one until mention at the 53rd minute. Instead it's neatly all about religion while painfully slow to get the point.

There's also a very irreverent tone to the series which starts to get tiresome very quickly.

"The next guy on the throne......one of this lot was......parachuted onto the throne by his granny.....he was a nasty piece of work......" Most of the episode is spent on Judaism and Christianity without any attempt to explain how conversion to Christianity may have lead to collapse, why couldn't an empire and church now wedded together be just as effective as a pagan one?

If this was a paper being graded it would surely get an F.

The only real moment of interest comes at the end when she argues that given roman culture and language survived for so long after the official end that in some was its real victory.

Now, if Mary Beard could adapt her book on the Roman Triumph to film , all would be well in the realm of classical roman studies. To do so, however, would necessarily require the herculean efforts of the film industry's most accomplished screenwriter/s, for Dr. Beard's work on that particular subject was so dry, that it spontaneously combusted in my hands before chapter 2 was even reached. As I am reading another of her offerings, I keep a bucket of sand handy!