I enjoy gladiator-type shows. I loved Gladiator with Russell Crowe, I enjoyed Ben-Hur, 300 was awesome, I even found some pleasure in watching Brad Pitt’s Troy.
So what did i think of Starz’s new show Sparticus: Blood and Sand? Not a whole lot.
This show is pretty much a combination of all the movies I listed above which is pretty lazy in my opinion. I imagine the following brainstorming meeting between writers and producers.
“We need a gladiator movie with fight scenes just like 300. Wait, no…not ‘like’…we need to just plain rip off 300. But to make it our own we’ll add TONS more blood. Like if one guy taps another guy on the back of the head, we’ll take a bathtub of red goo and throw it at the camera.
“Oh, and everyone needs to be good looking. In fact, they have to be sexy as all get out. AH! And tons, TONS of sex. Every time the camera shifts…throw someone in having sex, and if they can’t have sex then just show some nudity until we can get to the next scene with sex.
“Let’s see, what else. I know, we’ll use the F word like crazy. New rule, each line has to have the F word in it. If there’s no F word then it’ll probably be a scene were people are having sex. Granted, the F word came around centuries after Spartacus dropped dead…but F the facts!!! See what I did there? I used the F word for no reason at all.
“Now I know this is Rome and all…but we need to have actors with crazy awesome British accents. And let’s have the main character be a direct clone of Viggo Mortensen in Lord of the Rings. He’ll look like him, he’ll talk like him, he’ll have sex like him (if Lord of the Rings had sex), and man, will he use the F word. I smell Emmy!!!”
The best part of the show was the very beginning where the voice over said, and I paraphrase, “The following television show contains scenes of violent brutality, extreme sexual content, and course language. The use of which is meant to dramatize the savageness of Roman times.” Again, I’m paraphrasing, but what they meant was “we’re going to throw a bunch of cars exploding, F words, massive nudity, and Muslim terrorists at you because Rome back then was tough and we can’t figure out another way to show it to you. If you don’t like it, F you.”
Now. All that being said, some of my favorite shows of all time have had horrible beginnings. I think the idea is make sure everyone knows exactly what these characters are about, throw everything we have at the viewer the first few episodes so that everyone has a good idea of who they are. It happened on The West Wing, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, etc. They start off making you sip from a firehose and then let off the pressure and let things evolve more naturally. I’ll give Spartacus a couple of weeks out of respect for gladiators every where. However it’s not off to a good start.