Roman Empire

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!

A dramatized documentary on the Roman Empire, focussing in each season on one of its most famous, or infamous, emperors.

This series had some potential: a dramatized documentary on the Roman Empire - sort of The World At War meets Rome or Spartacus, right? An edifying documentary mixed with realistic, gritty, action-filled dramatizations.

Well, no. It doesn't even come close.

The documentary side is pretty basic. Sean Bean is no Laurence Olivier when it comes to narrating: he really doesn't have the gravitas or accent for it. The facts presented in the documentary are then sometimes distorted to make for better drama (though some of the original facts were interesting enough, so why change them?). So, as a documentary it is mediocre.

The drama itself is pretty bland. There's a few good action scenes but it is mostly pretty dull. Performances are at best passable and nothing more. Some of the minor actors are quite bad.

So history got rewritten for the sake of drama, and the drama largely sucks. Seems like they should have just stuck with the facts. And got a better narrator.

There's definitely a lot of historical inaccuracies but it's entertainment and there's lots to learn for people that don't know anything about that time period.

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.

It is generally entertaining, but the depictions and descriptions of the battlers are not accurate and miss some of the pivotal details. But worse is the depictions of Roman fighting style - Roman infantry fought in tight formations and stabbed with the Gladius! They really needed a military historian on this show. Instead you see Roman infantry hacking and slashing like some Hollywood depiction of ancient warfare - groan.