This, ultimately, is the smartest move made by writer-creator Robert Rodat in the development of this show: Pairing the destinies of the power player we like the best and the one we like the least. Every victory is tainted, every loss contains a glimmer of hope. It leaves you wanting things to both happen and not happen at the same time — like the senators who offer up the weakest “Hail, Caesar” in human history as a response to Domitian’s ascension, we both accept it and don’t. It’s very smart storytelling.

I reviewed the final two episodes of Those About to Die for Vulture. It was a hoot.

I’m growing increasingly fond of Those About to Die as it goes. I enjoy unexpected filigrees and flourishes like Xenon coming on to Scorpus, like the playful “tchk tchk” sound Antonia makes when she tells her prospective new driver, Elia, that he’ll need to prove himself (if that wasn’t an invention of actor Gabriella Pession, I’ll eat an Andalusian), or like Tenax proclaiming what might as well be this show’s house words as he maps out his plan for the soon-to-open Flavian Amphitheatre, a.k.a. the Roman Colosseum: “Enough is good, more is better, too much is perfect.”

I reviewed episodes seven and eight of Those About to Die for Vulture.

And as the world’s biggest sucker for cooperation, I can’t tell you how my heart leapt to see Tenax, Domitian, and Titus work together to thwart Marsus’s play for the throne. None of these guys are such great shakes, so it’s not like, “Hooray, evil is defeated” or anything like that. It’s more that it’s simply pleasant to watch people who have every incentive to be at each other’s throats instead choose to work together, help each other, and treat each other decently in the process. When Titus sincerely thanked Domitian for saving his life, I wanted to get in on a group hug. Life may be cheap in Rome, but that’s all the more reason to let your bro know you love him.

I reviewed episodes five and six of Those About to Die for Vulture.

Blue, white, red, green, gold — these are the colors of the factions whose drivers thrill the crowds at the Circus Maximus. But the color I want to talk about is purple. A dawn purple, a dusk purple, making the streets of Rome look cool and rich and inviting. This particular shade of purple doesn’t really show up until director Marco Kreuzpaintner takes over from Roland Emmerich for Those About to Die’s fourth episode. But after spending much of the intervening time in the amorphous, blue-and-orange color-graded no-man’s-land favored by so many TV productions today, it’s nice to spend a little time in lavender and violet. Feels appropriately imperial, doesn’t it?

I reviewed the third and fourth episodes of Those About to Die for Vulture.

With a cold-blooded murder orchestrated by its main character within its premiere episode’s first minute, Those About to Die ain’t your daddy’s sword-and-sandal action epic. Except that, well, it kind of is. Its writer-creator, Robert Rodat, is the Academy Award–nominated screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan, perhaps the greatest dad movie of them all (give or take a Shawshank Redemption). Roland Emmerich, director of the first two episodes, gave us Independence Day among many other “Sunday afternoon on TNT in a hotel room” blockbusters.

The show is largely being sold on the strength of a pivotal but minor role played by Anthony Hopkins, who achieved megastardom more than 30 years ago. Even the source material — the dubiously accurate and extraordinarily lurid “history” of Roman gladiatorial games and combat-sport spectacles by Daniel P. Mannix, the cover blurb of which is transcribed above — is the kind of thing you’d find moldering on your granddad’s bookshelf. For all its nudity and gore, the latter liberally splashed across the streets and statuaries of Rome in the CGI opening credits, Those About to Die is not in danger of crossing any kind of artistic Rubicon anytime soon.

The short version: This is the most obviously Game of Thrones–inspired show to come along since Shōgun, and it lacks half that show’s vision or restraint.

But sometimes you just wanna see sexy people in gladiator uniforms run around snogging and fighting and using old-timey accents to sound faux ancient. Well, I do, anyway. And even if there’s a lot of fat that could have been trimmed from these first two hourlong episodes, as well as a lot of dramatically inert characters who could have been spun into something more substantial, well, to paraphrase Gladiator, I was at least entertained.

I reviewed the first two episodes of Those About to Die for Vulture.