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Season two of “Rome” picks up only minutes after the events of season one, with Marc Anthony squatting over what’s left of Caesar on the bloody senate floor. Lucius Vorenus cradles the corpse of his wife. Titus Pullo sits in the meadow with his pretty ex-slave.
James Purefoy takes center stage is season two, stepping up heroically as the fierce, profane and gratifyingly vengeful Antony, the Brock Samson of ancient Europe. Set upon by a dozen of Brutus’ knife-wielding thugs the minute he leaves Caesar’s corpse, he manages to fend off the throng of assassins as he embarks upon his long, cunning and brutal sprint toward justice.
Antony is not the only attraction as the series’ final episodes unspool. There’s Gaius Octavian (Max Pirkis, then Simon Woods), who has evolved into a being of extraordinary persuasive ability - and improbably proves himself even gutsier and brainier than Antony. There’s Marcus Junius Brutus (Tobias Menzies, never more Rickmanesque), Antony and Octavian’s sneering, scheming nemesis. There’s David Bamber as the cowardly, duplicitous Marcus Tullius Cicero. And there’s Pullo (Ray Stevenson) and Vorenus (Kevin McKidd), whose post-Caesar stories build toward adventures brimming with horror, tragedy, heartbreak and mayhem.
I adore this series, and believe I prefer this second season of “Rome” to the excellent first; the later season’s plot zips along like rocketships, owing to what I’d guess was an abbreviated episode order from HBO. (It makes my temples throb to think that ten times as many people were watching “Desperate Housewives” Sunday nights at 9 p.m.)
The 10 season-two episodes are augmented by extras designed to enhance one’s appreciation of the series:
* “A Tale of Two Romes” (20:30). Twins Romulus and Remus are said to have co-founded Rome in 753 B.C., and this minidoc looks at the city’s dual communities: the 30-odd richest patrician families who resided on Palatine Hill with Atia and the not-so-rich plebeians who resided on Aventine Hill with Vorenus, where there was no real police or courts.
* “The Making of Rome, Season II” (22:52). Learn that extras on treadmills in front of bluescreens were computerized and electronically cloned to form Rome’s sprawling civil-war armies. Learn that one episode required 768 costumes. Learn that beautiful Kerry Condon, who plays Octavia, actually speaks with an Irish accent. Learn that series director Tim Van Patton still talks like he did when he played Salami on “The White Shadow.”
* “The Rise of Octavian: Rome’s First Emperor” (20:44). While Caesar’s heir was highly self-interested, he also turned out to be a spectacularly productive and popular dictator. Learn that as Rome’s first emperor, Octavian ended a century of civil wars and ruled for 41 years. (I happened to catch the Elizabeth Taylor “Cleopatra” on cable this week, and it’s striking how differently Octavian is portrayed in that movie by Roddy McDowell, all sickly and sinister.)
* “Antony & Cleopatra” (14:48). Historian Jonathan Stamp suggests that both Caesar and Antony were attracted by the Egyptian monarch’s undisguised ambition. A coin bearing Cleopatra’s profile demonstates that she was considerably less attractive than Elizabeth Taylor or Lyndsey Marshal, but Stamp allows that she had other virtues: “She’s very clever! She’s speaks lots of languages, she was the first Ptolemaic pharaoh to speak ancient Egyptian, so she’s super-bright, super-accomplished, brilliant singer, brilliant dancer, plays lots of instruments, obviously great at chit-chat and talk and schmoozing and all the rest of it. One has to suspect fabulous in bed. Quite a package.”
* Each episode comes with “All Roads Lead To Rome,” an optional scene-specific pop-up text feature that adds historical context to the proceedings.
Commentaries include:
* Co-creator/showrunner Bruno Heller and co-producer/historical consultant Jonathan Stamp on 2.1, “Passover.”
* Director John Maybury and actress Lindsay Duncan (Servilia) on 2.7, “Death Mask.”
* Producer John Melfi and director Carl Franklin on 2.8, “A Necessary Fiction.”
* Actor James Purfoy (Mark Antony) on 2.9, “Deus Impeditio Esuritori Nullus.”
* Co-creator/showrunner Bruno Heller and co-producer/historical consultant Jonathan Stamp on series finale 2.10, “De Patre Vostro.”
As with “The Tick Vs. Season One,” “The Tick Vs. Season Two” cannot be billed as a complete season set because it’s short an episode. 2.2, titled “Alone Together,” about the Galacticus-like Omnipotus, is the missing component, and presumably sits out the set due to copyright issues. Sadly, this was the only season-two episode script credited to future “Venture Bros.” mastermind Christopher McCulloch. (One wonders why the “Venture Bros.” season sets, which feature the Impossible Four, don’t stir Marvel’s ire. Perhaps because litigation-happy Disney isn’t behind that production?)
The 12 second-season episodes that did make the new set pit the slow-witted superhero and his mothman sidekick against the Swiss Commandos, Venus & Milo, Leonardo, the Deadly Bulb, Brainchild & The Idea Men, El Seed & Rosebud, the Ottoman Empress, Queen of the Ants Betty, Santa Clause, The Whats and the Heys, the Fin and the Terror.
In 2.8, originally aired in 1995, we learn that The Tick’s universe boasts a TV series titled “Heroes,” about superpowered people.
Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show was the 1984 almost-final season of “Super Friends.”
It was the first cartoon to feature the interplanetary mass murderer Darkseid, a character Marvel legend Jack Kirby introduced to the DC Comics universe in 1971. Darkseid had largely vanished from DC comics by 1984, and “The Legendary Super Powers Show” restored him to the comics' supervillain A-list. (Note that Darkseid and his minions utilize the wormhole-like Boom Tubes in the series, but for some reason they’re renamed “stargates.”)
Another notable aspect is TV’s live-action Batman, Adam West, with this season took over from character actor Olan Soule the role of “Super Friends’” Batman.
The season introduced the chrome Terminatoresque honeycomb-brain version of Brainiac, as he appeared in Action Comics the previous year.
On the hero side, the show brought to Saturday-morning animation the insanely powerful comic-book character Firestorm, who could turn instantly turn anything into anything else.
Non-funnybook Hanna Barbera ringers like the Apache Chief, Samurai, Black Vulcan, El Dorado and the Wonder Twins were brought forward from previous seasons, but at the expense of bona fide DC heroes like Flash, Atom, Hawkman, Aquaman and Green Arrow, who may appear in the title sequence, but do not appear in the episodes. (Green Lantern cameos in only one segment.)
More negatives. Standards of the era prevented the heroes from actually beating on anybody. Only eight half-hours (comprised of 16 11-minute stories) were produced for the season.
Extras include two documentaries: “Evolution: New Heroes, Vilier Villains and Ethnic Additions” (17:43) and “The Super Powers Collection: The Effect of the Toy Industry on the Super Friends” (7:37). Five segments feature DC historian (and “Kingdom Come” author) Mark Waid interviewing those five segments’ writers.
The beginning of the end. I never saw a “Simpsons” episode wholly devoid of funny until the series’ 10th season rolled around. Not every episode was a dud, but I remember the dud-to-decent ratio falling to about 50:50 with this era. Sadly, this season does not represent the series’ nadir; season 10 looks downright spectacular when compared to its 21st century counterparts.
“Marvel at our superior gate-sliding technology!”
Killers From Space represents the first sci-fi effort mocked by the Film Crew comedy collective, comprised of latter-day “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” vets Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett.
They make great sport of the movie’s interstellar props, its muppet-y bemittened aliens, star Peter Graves’ history with “Mission: Impossible” and “Biography,” and how long it takes for killers from space to actually turn up in this budget 1954 RKO thriller.
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For those unfamiliar? “The 4400” – overseen by former “Deep Space Nine” showrunner Ira Steven Behr - is an engaging and imaginative sci-fi series about 4,400 people who were abducted – “Close Encounters”-style - over the last 60 years. They’re all returned at once, and each for some mysterious reason has been granted a superpower. Eventually we learned that they were taken and endowed by forces from the future.
Season three of “The 4400” began right after the abductees learned the U.S. government was using chemicals to inhibit their superpowers. A superpowered terrorist cabal called the Nova Group emerged. The series began to utilize longer story arcs and tighter continuity. Characters from the first season – disgraced G-man Dennis Ryland and the Jesus-y superhuman Jordan Collier – returned. 4400 infant Isabelle grew up overnight into a hot, nudity-prone young adult and began acting all horny and evil. The Jeffrey Combs character, Kevin Burkoff, began trying to give himself superpowers with the substance called promicin, which is found in the blood of all of the 4400.
As “X-Men” knock-offs go, this third season represents a strong effort. Not as well-budgeted as NBC’s “Heroes,” certainly, but leagues better than Avi Arad’s syndicated crapfest “Mutant X.”
Extras on the new set include commentaries on six of the 12 episodes, four featurettes, a gag reel and a video introduction.
Season four begins June 17 on USA.
Jason of Star Command, streeting today, originally hit television the same autumn as “Battlestar Galactica,” as the unprecedented success of “Star Wars” continued to grip the popular imagination. “Jason” was crazy expensive for a '70s kid show, but TV execs could not be trusted to think clearly in the new age of Jedi mind trickery.
A spin-off of the Saturday morning kid show "Space Academy," “Jason” began life in 1978 as a weekly 15-minute component (and the only live-action component) of the jam-packed hourlong “Tarzan and the Super Seven” (which also housed “The New Adventures of Batman,” “Web Woman,” “Superstretch and Microwoman,” “Manta and Moray” and "The Freedom Force."). Sixteen of the 15-minute “Jason” segments, co-starring “Star Trek” regular James Doohan, were shot. The following season “Jason” became a standalone series of 12 half-hours.
Sid Haig, fresh from his roles in the blaxploitation actions “Coffy” and “Foxy Brown” and a quarter century before he tackled the role of Captain Spaulding in “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects,” played the main villain of the series, the tyrant Dragos. Dragos was always good enough to provide a steady stream of unmanned drones for Jason to blast.
The packaging on Cagney & Lacey: The True Beginning, streeting today, lies to you. The six-episode first season of “Cagney & Lacey,” like the original TV movie, starred Meg Foster as Chris Cagney. This package contains the show’s second season, the first to star Sharon Gless as Cagney.
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I am – Hercules!!
HBO slaps together an improbable number of great hours, but I rank “Rome” ahead of “The Sopranos,” “Oz,” “Deadwood,” “Carnivale,” “Band of Brothers” and “Six Feet Under.”
Mark Antony lies, steals, philanders, urinates on the houseplants, smears on mascara and fires deadly arrows into his innocent slaves for sport, yet one has to adore the way he balances his core recklessness with that canny knack for survival. Certainly the role will do wonders for the career of James Purefoy, who proves far too talented to be relegated to the ghetto of British television.
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Octavian and Antony, with all the hugging! Can this new alliance last?
March 25 brings the final episode of “Rome” ever, and HBO was good enough to forward details of that episode and the three preceding. (I note that Mere Smith, who spent a lot of time over at “Angel,” authors the penultimate installment.) All is cloaked in invisotext for those who wish not the spoilage.
For Immediate Release
Feb. 15, 2007
ROME - MARCH EPISODES
Episode #19: "Death Mask"
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There’s apparently some big sporting contest on CBS tonight, so “Battlestar Galactica,” “Desperate Housewives” and a lot of other Sunday shows are taking the night off.
Not so “Rome,” which comes roaring back with a moving four-star episode that sends Titus Pullo to Lucius Vorenus with news that the latter’s offspring still live.
Along the way Pullo runs into both Octavian (now played by Simon Woods) and Antony, former allies whose warring armies are busy hacking away at each other for control of the titular city-state.
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HBO unleashes another fast-moving episode of “Rome” tonight, with Lucius Vorenus settling into his new career as a Vito Corleone of Ancient Italy (with Titus Pullo serving as his Santino). Atia and Octavia get stoned together. Things go badly for a drunken Brutus in Bithynia. Antony bullies Cicero into reconsidering Antony’s retirement plans. And there’s a major reveal that will dramatically refocus Pullo’s energies. Octavian sits out this installment, but makes a compelling return next week, played by a different actor.
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“Rome” ain’t that pretty at all, but it’s still plenty fun.
We last saw these characters 14 months ago, but only minutes have passed for them. Marc Anthony squatting over what’s left of Caesar on the bloody Senate floor. Lucius Vorenus cradling the corpse of his wife. Titus Pullo sitting in the meadow with his pretty ex-slave.
James Purefoy is the star of the first episode, stepping up heroically as the fierce, loyal and gratifyingly vengeful Antony, the Brock Samson of ancient Europe. Set upon by a dozen of Brutus’ knife-wielding thugs the minute he leaves Caesar’s corpse, he manages to fend off the throng of assassins as he embarks upon his long, cunning and brutal sprint toward justice.
But Antony is not the only attraction as the series kicks off its second and final season. There’s young Gaius Octavian (Max Pirkis), who has evolved into a teen of extraordinary persuasive ability - and improbably proves himself even gutsier and brainier than Antony. There’s also Marcus Junius Brutus (Tobias Menzies, never more Rickmanesque), Antony and Octavian’s sneering, scheming nemesis. And of course there’s Pullo (Ray Stevenson) and Vorenus (Kevin McKidd), whose post-Caesar stories build slowly but end the episode with a riveting sequence brimming with angst-fueled mayhem.
It makes my temples throb to think that ten times as many people will be watching “Desperate Housewives” tonight instead.
But what matters Herc’s opinion?
TV Guide says:
… Deadwood in togas, a violent and bawdy tapestry of a vanished civilization. … It takes a while for Vorenus to snap out of his funk, stewing in guilt over the death of his wife and the abduction of his children. But when he does, heads literally roll. …
USA Today gives it two and a half stars (out of four) and says:
… few series that started as well have ever went as quickly and irretrievably off the tracks. With each episode, the show seems to move further from real life and the real Rome and off into some sex-crazed, soap-opera fantasy version of a place that has never, thankfully, existed before or since. … McKidd and Stevenson are as appealing as ever, but the show's strained conflation of fact and fiction has undermined their characters to the point of no return.
The New York Times says:
… engaging even if it isn’t a swords-and-sandals version of “The Sopranos,” as HBO had hoped. It may not be as knowing as “I, Claudius,” but it does excellent work with slit throats, severed limbs, pagan rituals and barbaric sexual acts. …
The Los Angeles Times says:
… smart, dirty fun. … There are all kinds of delicious performances here — James Purefoy's loutish, laddish, animal-clever Marcus Antony; Tobias Menzies' upright, tortured Brutus; McKidd's dangerously stiff-minded Vorenus (who will briefly become the Tony Soprano of the Aventine Hill before, in a distinct echo of "The Searchers," heading off to find his kidnapped children); Lee Boardman's hired-knife Timon, who will likely have more to do this season with the arrival of his brother, a revolutionary from Judea.
The Chicago Tribune says:
It’s hard to know where to start in describing the pleasures of “Rome” … The sprawling cast, most of it from the U.K., is a joy to watch: Polly Walker brings sharp wit and perfect timing to her role as the scheming noblewoman Atia of the Julii, who is the intimate or enemy of everyone who matters in ancient Rome; James Purefoy gives a disturbingly vicious undercurrent to the transformation of Mark Antony from charming playboy to selfish dictator; and Lyndsey Marshal gives Cleopatra a queenly demeanor married to a palpable sensuality.
But this season belongs, even more than the first year did, to Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus, who are played with enormous vigor and humanity by Ray Stevenson and Kevin McKidd. The two characters, who met as Roman soldiers, are one of the great TV pairings of our time.
The Washington Post says:
…HBO reminds us of the better uses to which television can be put. The HBO season begins auspiciously and, lest that sound stuffy, raucously tonight … "Rome" dramatizes, among other things, the birth of politics as usual -- and dramatizes it with the flourish of high drama and the urgency of tonight's headlines.…
The Hollywood Reporter says:
… remains a wholly impressive piece of work, stylish and graphic and bold in equal measure while at the same time greatly lacking a cohesive focus. This might be due in part to utilizing a committee of different writers and directors, each of whom no doubt has his own artistic vision. It tends to diminish the enjoyment of an otherwise sumptuous feast. …
Variety says:
… if the show is going to run two years only, this splendidly acted melodrama delivers a bloody good time barreling toward oblivion, delivering enough political intrigue, violence and sex to slake even the most debauched viewing appetites. Unlike the similarly engrossing "Deadwood," concluding the story here -- following the battle to succeed the fallen Caesar -- seems a proper finale. … has a little something for everyone, and its byzantine twists and turns are seldom predictable unless, perhaps, you have a doctorate in Roman history. Even when the narrative occasionally bogs down, the stellar and mostly European cast simply powers through it. …
9 p.m. Sunday. HBO.
Willow, Anya, Fred, Faith, Kendra, Cordelia, Darla, Dru and Dawn up to 50% Off!!
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I am - Hercules!!
HBO announced in mid-September that it had renewed "Rome" for a second season. Then there was a report in the New York Times that shed some doubt on whether "Rome" 2.x would get into the premium-cable arena at all.
Well
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I am -- Hercules!!
This arrived in the Mt. Olympus mailbox yesterday:
After an article in the New York Times (17th November) the second
season of Rome is now in question.
Pre-production has stopped in Italy and the producers are baffled
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I am -- Hercules!!
"Pullo's dead to me."
Was there a scene in "Gladiator" as much fun as Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus bloodily schooling Pullo's ill-mannered arena opponents near the conclusion of last week's penultimate "Rome"?
It's
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