During the (rather few) moments NaNoWriMo let me free to do something else, I’ve started watching a new series now premiering on Netflix. Historical fiction, to be true: Roman Empire: Reign of Blood, which narrates the real events related to the reign of Emperor Commodus. The name rings a bell? Of course – it’s the super-villain of the Gladiator. With a substantial difference: where Joaquin Phoenix portrays a murderous, crazy and utterly despicable character, the series adopts a more subdued approach. This is because, fictionalised as The Roman Empire: Reign of Blood might be, it’s nonetheless quite historically accurate, to the point of being having scholars at times intruding the stream of events and offering comments and expert opinions.
The results are good – offering a less simplistic view to the Emperor’s certainly weak but still complex personality and, in general, to the II sec Roman Empire – in the middle between its greatest glory and the seeds of its decline. The characters are convincing, not only Commodus – whose main fault seems to have been encircling himself with wrong advisers – but also his rapacious pretorian Cleander, his sister Lucilla (not the pure soul Russell Crowe’s movie has shown) and the senator Cassius Dio (my favourite).
I have especially liked the way the whole series (or docuseries, as this genre is called) has been narrated – incidentally, by Sean Bean (yes, Ned Stark) – highlighting how different the social and political conditions were at that time and how careful you must be when making judgements.
It’s important to remember that it’s still a TV show – therefore you can expect a fair amount of violence, blood – in the arena and outside – and sex. While it doesn’t reach the extent of other shows in kind – like Borgia, say – I won’t recommend it to a young audience.
But I do recommend it to all the others. It’s a mix of history and fiction that works well as it were pure epic fantasy. It also offers a glimpse at the Roman world as a whole, which I believe it’s the most interesting contribution made by this show.
Here’s the trailer – enjoy!
Sounds interesting… I always appreciate the effort of screenwriters to stay closer to historical truth, and the fact that this is more of a docu-drama than a complete fiction might take it a few notches over the usual “historical” fare. I will keep it in mind if it ever airs here, thank you! 🙂
Yes, it’s definitively worth watching. If only more so-called “historical” shows were done like that…!
As far as I know from what I’ve read, Commodus never killed any Gladiator in a public fight. They always surrendered to him and their lives were spared. But in the Netflix series, he’s killing them all pretty brutally. Also, the Roman people never admired him for fighting in the games, they considered it beneath the dignity of an Emperor.
Hello Nate, thanks for stopping by. You’re absolutely right when you said that the Roman considered disgraceful having their own Emperor in the arena. Regarding what he actually did with his opponents, there are some competing views, and if it is true that he spared the ones that submitted to him in the arena, he privately killed his sparring partners (or so one of his biographers, Cassio Dio, relates). I have to say, albeit its shortcoming, this Netflix series has proved better than others, which have not even attempted to be historically accurate on points more important than arena games. Hope you did enjoy it, too. 🙂