Domina

Each episode is better than the next. As an Ancient Roman (amateur) historian, this uses actual events to create a gripping narrative of the lives of the characters surrounding Livia Drusilla of the Claudii. Thie writing is as phenomenal as the acting. This cast is AMAZING! Edge-of-your-seat, non-stop intensity. This is officially my favorite show right now. Because of the plethora of instrumental characters with similar sounding names and appearances, sometimes it's difficult to keep track of who's who. This is the only reason I'm not giving this 10 stars. But each character is so engaging, and historically accurate.

Starts out the first couple episodes and looks like it's going to be some millennial thing for the CW, but then it gets pretty good. Historical femme fatale material, but of course they have to make her less vicious and give her a cause being the woke era and all. Still pretty good though since she is one of the more overlooked historical women and there is a lot of story left if they continue on until her end. They could get a good 3 or 4 seasons out of this at least at the pace they are going and still keep things alive.

Deals with the tough time Livia and her son Tiberias had before her rise. And believable.

Not always accurate. Freed slaves were Freemen or Free-women and Roman citizenship was not lightly given. Also Dictator was a respectable office held for a limited period to overcome great dangers. It ended after Julius Caesar made himself Dictator for Life.

Octavius was probably more dependent on Agrippa than is shown, but is a convincing character.

It needlessly skips over the complex politics that had Cicero sponsoring Octavian against Marcus Antonius, before they became allies.

But it's the most accurate drama I've seen. Much more so than the earlier series Rome.

Started out okay. Stuck with it as it gradually got better and better. I found it both clever and entertaining. At the end and I'm already anxious for the next season. I've seen some criticism concerning language. Seems a silly critique. They are speaking English for a modern audience. I can't imagine sitting through a lengthy series listening to the entire cast speak Latin just for the sake of being historically correct.

I have to refute all the negativity about this series. I watched it over 3 evenings and, while not the best ever, yes it has it's flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed this series. I have read a lot of Roman history from this era and this series stays close enough to the truth for a fictional TV series. And that is the point - it's not a documentary, it's not even docu-drama, it's fiction. I found the story engaging, the characters and acting decent, the sets were gorgeous even if not historically accurate. Rome, which this has been compared to, and which I also really enjoyed, was so much more inaccurate it was laughable. But that's not why you watch a series like this. I like to follow up after for the truth and the details. A simple Wikipedia search will fill all that in for you. My only critique is that it fell really flat in the last two episodes. The drama and action seems to drag when it should have had a more fulfilling ending. But there is so much more story to cover for another or even into a third season.

One tip to help you in keeping track of all the names and characters, especially in the first few episodes and when they change the principle actors - turn on your subtitles! Even when reading about Ancient Rome, it's really hard to keep the names and characters straight so this helped a lot.