Spartacus BBC2

Anyone else watching this doco type thing on BBC2 atm? What you think so far?

The production values were quite high and the authenticity regarding costumes was accurate (I think!) but the narrative was hopeless. Spartacus in this docudrama was one-dimensional and his whole story was reduced to an aimless meander around Italy! All very slight, I thought . . .

I only saw the last twenty minutes but I spent the first few working out which one was Spartacus and which one was his friend (forget his name), after that I thought the effects were very good although some of the lines were a bit weak.

i loved it how they showed us 5 roman archers but there was at least 500 arrows they shown us in the air, then like a million principes came

If it was anything like the Atilla the Hun production, it was probably horribly innacurate and badly scripted. Decent acting, though, if that makes up for anything.

and a cockney senate

terrible script, so bad, so bad, at least atilla the hun was somewhat enjoyable, seeing all those late antiquity romans we rarely see on screen.

There have been better documentaries about Spartacus.

It seemed to lean toward the style of the HBO - Rome series, but with a much smaller budget. Unfortunately this led to the battle scenes reminding me of Sharpe's Waterloo (where the battle of 180,000 men was depicted with about 50 extras).

The lead actor looked rather slavic, which fits nicely with the theory that Spartacus was Thracian (but this is tenuous, because it is also thought that he may just have been a gladiator who fought in the Thracian style).

I understand that dialect was used to illustrate class differences (anyway, our American cousins expect villians to have upper-class English accents) but I found it rather grating, especially the use of anachronistic idiom.

I was very disappointed with the battles, there didn't seem to be any fighting in formation, and our hero was constantly exposing his back in the sure and certain knowledge that he was going to be in the next scene.

There was also a certain amount of telescoping of history, the slave army is never seen to be trained or formed in any way. Three successive victories are combined into a single ambush on the border with Gaul, his subsequent defeat of Crassus is not mentioned,and neither is the plan to cross the straits of Messina.

Contrary to the programme, Spartacus successfully breached the wall of Crassus and only chose the final battle when he was trapped between Crassus, Pompey and Lucullus.

The slave army never seemed to acquire any armour or decent weapons. Again, I am fairly sure that many of them would have been equipped in Roman panoply by the time of the last battle.

Seek the truth here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus

Moved to the appropriate sub-forum.

I don't want to stir a hornet's nest, but why would Slavic features be appropriate for a Thracian?

Originally Posted by Phoebus

I don't want to stir a hornet's nest, but why would Slavic features be appropriate for a Thracian?

Because of a modern expectation for people from Bulgaria to look Slavic. For a more comprehensive explanation of what we think ancient people looked like please see Persians in 300


or even better Mongols in The Conqueror

Are you guys talking about the mini-series starring Goran Visnjic (Spartacus)? Or is this something newer?

Originally Posted by Prince_of_Macedon

Are you guys talking about the mini-series starring Goran Visnjic (Spartacus)? Or is this something newer?

I think we mean this one

Fact is, though, you've cited movies while this is a documentary. The intent is, or should be, for historical accuracy.

At any rate, I don't mean to drag this on to a debate of semantics. I admit that there probably aren't any people that look genuinely Thracian any more, and thus the choice of actor is really not that important. I was just curious about your point of view in this case, that's all.

Originally Posted by Phoebus

Fact is, though, you've cited movies while this is a documentary. The intent is, or should be, for historical accuracy.
...I was just curious about your point of view in this case, that's all.

My comment about Slavs and Thracians was sloppy, but it was in the context that the programme makers were making an attempt to portray Spartacus as a foreigner, in the same way that they used dialect to illustrate class. If we could work out what a Thracian actually looked like (I believe they were an Indo-European people - not slavs) then it probably wouldn't have meant much to the audience.

There are other documentaries where this has been more successful. I am more than happy with the BBC TV drama documentary of Hannibal played by Alexander Siddig. He feels rather well cast as Hannibal not only because he seems to have the right look, but also because he has sufficient screen presence and charisma to convince me that he could have been a leader of men. I believe that Alexander Siddig is actually Sudanese.

It was a great mini-series, the Hannibal one, but once you watch it once you can't really watch it again. Its partially accurate, its got good action scenes, good CGI, but not exceptional.

I dont get why the BBC make semi historicly accurate docos, with 50 man battles and crap story lines, Rome was the best anyway

Hey Juvenal,
The video link isn't working anymore, but thanks for finding it anyway

The show docu-drama sounds interesting - maybe it'll air in the US one of these days.

Originally Posted by Prince_of_Macedon

Hey Juvenal,
The video link isn't working anymore...

That's odd, it still works for me.

I'm not sure if docu-drama is the best way of portraying famous people and events of the ancient world. Their lifestyle and outlook were very different to those of modern people and I think it is very difficult to convey this without having narration (and lots of it).

The trouble with giving characters modern accents, or casting them to have a particular racial appearance is that there is a lot of excess modern mental baggage attached to these things that goes far beyond the point the programme makers were trying to get across.