Gladiators: The Brutal Truth

Packaged up with the Medieval Lives series, this slightly earlier one-off documentary exploring the historical realities of Roman gladiators is much less bombastic in tone but no less interesting in it's contemporary challenge to the Ridley Scott film. The warm noughties nostalgia I felt for the medieval series is also much more enhanced here because only five years after this was filmed I myself visited Pompeii, so to see it how I remember it with Tez rambling around is really magical. There's also the inevitable sequence where the Python's most prominent nudist disrobes and tries to fight like a Gladiator which is fantastic.