Colosseum

Occasionally interrupted by an interesting series. Each episode might be less than 30 minutes per hour. First and last thing I'll ever plod through on The History Channel.

I'll preface my review by saying that I ploughed through Mike Duncan's The History of Rome podcast which is several hundreds of hours long and insanely in depth. Colosseum contained eight compelling stories which were entirely new to me, not having been covered in the podcast or my other studies on Rome, and did them really well.

Now, that doesn't mean that it covers them in depth at 40 minutes an episode, but the story choices are well chosen and the show is well conceived, well executed and well told.

Colosseum is part documentary, part dramatisation. A narrator covers the vast majority of what is going on, backed up by talking head experts and with important scenes acted out. Generally this works really well.

The narration is excellent. Robert Cargill strikes the perfect note in his speech. The script is good and covers the important notes of giant books of history in a swift manner. It leans more towards getting the story of the individuals across and that's fine because the stories are powerful.

The talking heads are the weakest part of the production, and not because of who they are or what they have to say, but because the interviews are clipped into two or three sentence soundbites and sprinkled throughout the episode. It does work within the context of the show, but the soundbites do leave you wanting to hear a bit more from the historians.

The dramatisations are excellent - if you ignore the clearly limited budget. You are not getting big budget cgi here or Hollywood choreographed fights. However, the Director and Editor are on the ball, the CGI has been stylised so that once you buy into the non photorealistic style, it works perfectly well. The Gladiatorial fights are edited well enough to hide the fact that there wasn't the budget to take things to a higher level safely and that's absolutely fine. You'll also spot occasional continuity errors or reused shots, but none of this takes away from the production. Because what shines in the production is the actors. The actors in each story have just three or four scenes and not much more than a few lines in which to establish a historical character in a way that can sustain the episode. As a former actor myself, I know that this is a tough ask because characters are created from their dialogue and actions. The less you have to go on, the more has to be made up and the more of a sketch or caricature the character can fall into. I have to say that each and every one of the main actors in these stories brings in a complete and compelling character that could sustain an entire season, not just a few scenes in a single episode. Excellent work by all involved.

And of course this is a History Channel production. It is an excellent presentation of History, taught me plenty that I didn't already know and was highly enjoyable. More like this please.

Gave up after 30 mins of episode 1. The endless droning of a selection of boring talking heads, sorry 'academics', tediously intercut every minute with 'action sequences' was too much. Basically daytime TV crud. The only thing missing were adverts evert 10 mins for funeral services, stair lifts, online gambling and teeth whitening. I assume the endless emphasis on gore, mutilation and death was for the American audience, who like that sort of thing. No brain needed to watch this. A real shame as 8 episodes is enough to go into detail on an internationally fascinating subject. The facts are all there it's just horrendously badly scripted, presented and edited. Go read a book on it.

Following the first installment I abandoned it, checking it a few times now & then if it had improved. Some of the information is extremely interesting but the intense interruptions of commercials was the end for me. It's value is hopefully inspiring someone to have an interest in ancient history, etc.

As for the commercial breaks - exactly the reason why we all but put "Oak Island" on hiatus.

This programme goes much deeper into the origins and history of the Colosseum than any other that I've seen about it.

The details of the construction are mind-boggling and the skill of the master builder behind it is remarkable. The programme also does a good job of placing the construction project in the timeline of the Roman imperial Flavian dynasty.

The dramatic scenes are well done too, with some good acting performances and effective special effects.

You'll certainly have a much better understanding of how the Colosseum was built and it's place in the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, Domitian and other emperors who followed them.