Rome (2005 show) and familiar faces

[annavere]

Finished Rome. It was a Christmas gift for my guy, adding to his stockpile of HBO shows, so it's been our evening watch and he enjoyed it a lot more than me - which is fair and correct. I didn't do a write up for season one because a favorite character of mine died in the last episode and I was too glum to bother, and then season two tripled down on the bleakness and abandoned all the comedic elements that made season one fairly breezy, so when I tried putting together some notes I just wasn't feeling it anymore. I seem to have lost my taste for shows without heroes. However, I did enjoy all the familiar faces throughout, and appreciated that most of them got meatier roles worthy of their considerable talents here, so that's what this post is about.



David Bamber (Cicero). It was worth the price of admission to see David Bamber portray Cicero. Being familiar with Mr. Collins from the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, the exemplar of an odious suitor, to see this actor play a man of dignity and gravitas was truly glorious. Stole every scene he was in. The better role? Apples and oranges. He defined Mr. Collins for at least one generation, but I am really glad he didn't get typecast for his efforts because he's an excellent actor.

Tobias Menzies (Brutus). The first of three actors I knew from Game of Thrones, which assembled incredible talent and then underutilized all of it. Menzies acted the hell out of his role as Edmure Tully, but he was in something like two episodes and never got the chance to do much. His huge brown eyes and stoically unshed tears were put to much better use as weak, conflicted Brutus. By the time he killed Caesar, a standard historical anecdote had become an absolute gutpunch, and then I spent the first half of season two wondering where Brutus had got off to. He finally got a share of the plot in time for a great death scene.

Ciarán Hinds (Julius Caesar). Again with the Game of Thrones cast. Hinds got in and out of that show fairly early, so his role as King of the Wildlings was solid, if fairly small. I also remember him in a few costume dramas, notably as Bois-Guilbert on Ivanhoe, and the fact that I kept his name in my actor file from that long ago says something. Anyway, Caesar is a hell of a part to play and he did his usual excellent job with it, and I particularly enjoyed his genre-savvy reactions to Vorenus and Pullo. Sadly, that type of leavening humor died with Caesar and...

Indira Varma (Niobe). I was not happy with Niobe's death. I loved her, with all her regrets and struggles, guilt and propriety. Her relationship with Vorenus never felt cliched, and to see them work to repair their marriage and bring it to a better place than before was really sweet. They had great chemistry, Pullo was a sweetly disturbing marriage counselor (cheating spouse? Easy to solve, just kill the other guy!) and they provided a stable center to the political strife and mayhem whirling around them. As for this role vs. Ellaria Sand on Game of Thrones? No contest. Now that I've seen her portraying a layered and consistent character, that role was an even more shocking waste of Indira Varma's talents.

Kevin McKidd (Vorenus). The de facto lead here, and I spent the first episode struggling with where I knew his face and finally, reluctantly guessed that it might be from Grey's Anatomy. I was correct. He was one of the dozen or so heart-throb surgeons, and I remember him being among the more charismatic ones, but that show is a nonsensical blur of cursed hospital deaths and maimings...

Anyway, Vorenus discovering the truth was all set to deliver an amazing second season, with him knowing honor demands he put his wife to death, utterly enraged and heartbroken but still reluctant to go through with it, and finally learning how to bend his rigid beliefs for the sake of love and forgiveness. Damn, that would have been great. Also hot. Instead, Niobe took a header, Vorenus turned into a wholesale miserable git with no strong moral compass left, and while he eventually repaired his friendship with Pullo, it never felt the same as it did before. Eventually he went to Egypt and his broody misery started to work for me again, but the Niobe aftermath was a slog - and the showrunners decided this plotline was so successful, they repeated it wholesale with the murder of Pullo's wife, for twice (no, three times!) the deathbed manpain. (*headdesk*). Leading to...

Zuleikha Robinson (Gaia). Robinson played my massive teen girlcrush Yves Adele Harlow on the fairly atrocious Lone Gunmen show, of which she forms the bulk of my fond memories, so it was a bit of a drag to see her be progressively more of a monster in each episode here. It doesn't help she was introduced like she was going to be cool, and next thing there's violent sex, murdering a pregnant woman and her deathbed confession being followed by getting strangled and dumped in a river - I mean, she did a fine job with the role, so it's not really a complaint, just uncomfortably Did Not Want considering. Then again, on a show where most of the women are pawns and sex objects, why did the only ones who freely chose their bed partners and made their own decisions have to be completely evil harlots?

Lindsay Duncan (Servilia). I'm familiar with her from Doctor Who, where she was a memorable guest star in the horrifying and brilliant 'Waters of Mars.' Servilia also got a purposeful suicide, but it's hard to say this was a better role because that was a one-episode impact - the kind of integral material the greatest guest roles are made for - and Servilia was a key player for a while. Apples and oranges again. Servilia, like her rival Atia, spent most of her time bent on revenge and indifferent even to her own flesh and blood, but she was regal and riveting to watch. She also got a hell of a death scene, after which the writers finally stopped treating Atia like a cartoon villainess and gave her some desperately needed layers, which I greatly appreciated.

Kerry Condon (Octavia). I know her from Better Call Saul, which I respected but never really could enjoy. Her role as Mike's daughter-in-law only ever existed to the extent needed by his plotlines, so I'm calling Octavia the better role. She was ground down over the course of two seasons from a rather sweet harmless girl to a depressed drug addict to a jaded prisoner of her family, betrayed by everyone she ever cared for. Which was well done, and had any of the remaining plotlines balanced it out at all I might have found it emotionally gripping, but by season two it just felt like misery porn.

Allen Leech (Agrippa). I'm gonna break the trend and say he was under-served by Rome. Landing a lead role on Downton Abbey gave him the chance to show some range. He did reckless, political upstart, lovelorn puppy, grieving widower, awkward, socially isolated, good friend and so on for six seasons. On Rome he pretty much was stuck with a mix of awkward and lovelorn puppy - even when he broke up with Octavia. Owing to time constraints, most likely, he never got to do any military stuff. Kind of a bit part, but it was nice to see him.

And that's it for familiar faces. Time to go look for Niobe fix fics and Highlander crossovers...

Comments

[gelliaclodiana]

Ah Rome! So much potential there. And yet... Well, the people who were in it solely for the Pullo/Vorenus ship got out mostly OK, I guess? I had a lot of opinions about it, obviously, but it did kind of grow on me in the end. Even though it was terrible at anything historical. Mostly terrible, but the terrible parts were outstandingly terrible. I wrote somewhere in one of my comments that Rome is a show that repays shallowness, and I stand by that comment.

I loved Indira Varma in it, she's so great and it's an amazing role, but seriously, has she ever survived a show? I know people joke about Sean Bean but I literally cannot think of a role I've seen her in where she wasn't killed off at some point in the exercise.

I'm glad that you appreciated Cicero in it -- he had some good moments. And Tobia Menzies will always be Brutus to me, no matter what role he is supposed to be playing. he made me feel sympathy for Brutus! I hate Brutus! (I don't really hate the historical Brutus, I just find him really annoying. Unlike the historical Octavian, who I do loathe with a deep and abiding passion, which I never did overcome for this show). I loved Ciaran Hinds' performance as well -- I mean, obviously playing Caesar is a great role, but he catches Caesar's ruthlessness and charm really well.

(This is the tag link to all my episode comments and also some general stuff about Roman history: https://vaznetti.dreamwidth.org/tag/rome. Don't feel obligated to look at it, but DO tell me if you ever find good Niobe fix-it fic.)

[annavere]

Thank you for linking to your trove of opinions! While I certainly did not go into this show expecting to learn anything about Roman history (not an area I'm especially familiar with, and nothing I would trust TV to educate me on), your posts are fun and informative, and I took the liberty of reading some of the points you made about Roman culture out loud to my boyfriend as well. Very helpful and interesting to us both.

I think this show lived on the strength of its actors and visuals, both of which knocked it out of the park. Ooh, question: How accurate were the sets and costumes? I'm not seeing any references to that aspect in your posts (admittedly not having gone through them all yet!) :)

[gelliaclodiana]

How accurate were the sets and costumes?

It's been a while but I think the sets were mostly pretty good! What they missed out on (in my memory) was how crowded Rome actually was -- probably 95% of the population of the city lived in 6 story walk-ups and the back streets were often narrow and twisty and dark. But that's hard to film in, probably. At one point I'd heard that the Rome sets had burnt down but I think in fact they were reused for Domina (which is the superior trashy show about Roman politics, based on the early life of Livia. So far I've only seen the first season and I loved it, but to be fair as far as I can tell the producers sat down and said, "hey, let's make a show just for vaznetti, that will be great!" But anyway, I digress.)

The costumes... So what I remember mostly was that respectable, free Roman women in the late republic actually wore a lot more clothes than the female characters on the show did. Someone like Niobe would have been wearing a stola when she went out, which is just a giant drapey wool scarf that wraps all around her and covers her head as well. Just a whole lot less nudity and skimpy clothes on the female characters, probably even including the enslaved women. Which is hardly surprising, really!

[annavere]

Interesting! Thanks for following up! :)

[selenak]

Re: the second season, I give it some leaveway, because they had only filmed a few episodes of it when learning they were cancelled, so had to rush through all the major plot lines they originally were intending to last longer (that's why Timon's subplot goes nowhere, for example). And the second season does have two of my favourite scenes involving Antony and Vorenus (one in Sons of Hades, one in the finale), plus I like how unexpectedly better the relationship between Octavia and Atia got, and Servilia gets one of the all time great death scenes. But yes, the first season holds together more, and has Indira Varma being wonderful as Niobe. For a general Rome meta back when I did my rewatch, see here. Also, I committed fanfic:

Survival (about Atia and Octavia)

Ash and Iron (about Atia and Servilia)

[annavere]

I do try to be lenient when criticizing cancelled shows, and I expect to enjoy more about it on rewatch when the dramatic shifts in tone won't bother me so much.

Because I haven't run across James Purefoy before I never had reason to mention Antony in my post, but his interactions with Vorenus were all quite riveting to watch and I wished there were more of them. I thought Vorenus humanized him and made him a more compelling figure, and the actors played off of each other really well. Likewise, I thought Pullo and Octavian's scenes were always good, and by the end their interactions were the only humanizing quality Octavian had left - again, there just weren't enough of them. I could have done with a 30% reduction of the Aventine war plotlines to make room.

I look forward to reading your Atia stories as soon as I have time. She was definitely one of the things season two most improved.

[killabeez]

I watched this avidly when it first aired, but now, years later, I'm pretty sure my favorite thing about (other than Ray Stevenson) it is the credits sequence. I still comment whenever I see one of the actors in something else, though. I guess if nothing else, it made an impression!

[annavere]

Oooh yes, HBO does ridiculously gorgeous opening credits. I found with Rome I had to force myself to pay any attention to the actual "credit" parts, because I kept looking at everything else. :)