Barbarians Rising

I think the keyword here is docudrama. Is the series 100% accurate? No, it can't be, we weren't there and most of the history of the times came from the Romans themselves. That said, it had well acted and engrossing stories that made me do much additional reading on the significant characters. It was enlightening, fun and entertaining to boot. If I was a teacher and wanted to get young adults interested in Roman history, I would definitely use this as an introduction. I highly recommend.

The "drama" part of this docudrama is surprisingly excellent. The dialogue, acting, costumes, and special effects blew me away. However, I can't for the life of me figure out why they decided to have CEOs, random politicians, and Civil Rights activists interrupt great scenes with useless comments. The professors and archeologists sometimes have insightful comments, but everyone else is laughable. Would be interested to see an edit of this series where all of that stuff is removed, because it really could stand on its own.

As an ex-high school Ancient History teacher, I thought this series took a very one-eyed view of Rome and, as others have pointed out, gets a few of the "facts" wrong. It depicted the Romans as the bad guys and the barbarians as the good guys (and girls). The ancient world was a pretty brutal place no matter where you were.

Think back to the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where the troupe satirically reels off a long list of the good things the Romans had done. A lot of uprisings did not have popular support, as many thought Rome offered an OK deal, or at least a better deal than they were getting.

Rather than a one-sided narrative, this series would have been a lot better with some historical objectivity in the mix.

A documentary series on the rebel leaders who stood up to the Roman Empire, with varying degrees of success. Through narration, expert opinion and dramatized scenes we see the histories of Hannibal, Viriathus, Spartacus, Boudica, Arminius, Fritigern, Alaric, Geiseric and Attila the Hun and their struggles for independence from Rome.

An interesting period of history, with colourful subjects, well told. Well dramatized too - not just basic battle scenes as many military history series seem to consist of, but decent dialogue and human drama, in addition to some great action scenes. Many well known actors and actresses too.

On the downside, the dramatization sometimes takes precedence over historical accuracy. Also, the experts that are wheeled out feel very staged, speech-filled, preachy and superfluous. For example, why on earth do you need Jesse Jackson for a series about the Roman Empire? The experts are largely just padding.

Firstly this is not, let me repeat this not, in my estimation, an accurate historical documentary. There's license taken with some of the historical facts in order, I suspect to fit the flow of the story line(s) crafted for this short series.

Casting that not inconsiderable fact aside, what this series does do and does well, is bring a general facsimile of ancient Western history alive. This is a positive in so much as it that may encourage the interest of those who have no academic background in the subject.

What assists Barbarians Rising immensely, is a quality, mostly British cast. There are some well known faces here who breathe life, in a convincingly down to earth way, into key historical players from the period.

As a note I'd add some have criticized this series because of its title. Its true many of the civilizations the Roman's labelled "Barbarian" were sophisticated. Some more so than Rome itself. What this refers to is the Roman "attitude" towards other civilizations. This is clearly defined at the beginning of each episode and indeed, does accurately reflect Romes general attitudes, to anyone not Roman or classically Greek.

All in all, as is often the case where historical truth meets the commercial imperative to entertain, some license has been taken but there is still enough on offer here, to say this series does have some general educational value too. 7/10 from me.