TWO ARMIES OF 5,000 MEN FOUGHT TO THE DEATH.
THE SHOW WAS LIT AT NIGHT BY HUMAN TORCHES.
LEOPARDS AND BULLS WERE TAUGHT TO RAVAGE WOMEN.
THE ARENA SEATED 385,000 AND THE SHOW WENT ON 350 DAYS A YEAR — THE COSTLIEST, CRUELEST SPECTACLE OF ALL TIME.
  —cover copy, Those About to Die, Daniel P. Mannix, 1958
With a cold-blooded murder orchestrated by its main character within its premiere episode’s first minute, Those About to Die ain’t your daddy’s sword-and-sandal action epic. Except that, well, it kind of is. Its writer-creator, Robert Rodat, is the Academy Award–nominated screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan, perhaps the greatest dad movie of them all (give or take a Shawshank Redemption). Roland Emmerich, director of the first two episodes, gave us Independence Day among many other “Sunday afternoon on TNT in a hotel room†blockbusters.
The show is largely being sold on the strength of a pivotal but minor role played by Anthony Hopkins, who achieved megastardom more than 30 years ago. Even the source material — the dubiously accurate and extraordinarily lurid “history†of Roman gladiatorial games and combat-sport spectacles by Daniel P. Mannix, the cover blurb of which is transcribed above — is the kind of thing you’d find moldering on your granddad’s bookshelf. For all its nudity and gore, the latter liberally splashed across the streets and statuaries of Rome in the CGI opening credits, Those About to Die is not in danger of crossing any kind of artistic Rubicon anytime soon.
The short version: This is the most obviously Game of Thrones–inspired show to come along since ShÅgun, and it lacks half that show’s vision or restraint.
But sometimes you just wanna see sexy people in gladiator uniforms run around snogging and fighting and using old-timey accents to sound faux ancient. Well, I do, anyway. And even if there’s a lot of fat that could have been trimmed from these first two hourlong episodes, as well as a lot of dramatically inert characters who could have been spun into something more substantial, well, to paraphrase Gladiator, I was at least entertained.
Much of that entertainment value stems from the casting of Iwan Rheon as Tenax, the show’s main character. Rheon played Ramsay Bolton on Thrones, i.e., the most openly psychotic piece of shit on a show full of them, and he made a meal of the role at every turn. His work here is a lot less over the top but no less mustache-twirling.
Tenax is what fans of today’s answer to gladiatorial combat, professional wrestling, would call a cool heel. He’s an unapologetic gangster and bookmaker at the chariot races who routinely cheats big-spending customers, rigs competitions, colludes with the sport’s most popular rider, Scorpus (Dimitri Leonidas), and kills bettors who renege. You could easily read his entire story line as a warning about the dangers of legalized sports betting. Yet, because he’s a plebeian, a commoner, rather than a member of Rome’s awful and decadent aristocracy, you’re fully on his side against his alleged superiors.
Tenax’s big plan is to team up with Scorpus to create a fifth “faction†in the races, one they would own and operate themselves. As in contemporary sports, team ownership is a path to fame, prestige, and the all-important dignitas the fat cats of Rome crave. Also as in contemporary sports, it’s a hotbed of backstabbing, political cronyism, and corruption.
Tenax and Scorpus can use this corruption to their advantage, and not just because Scorpus is sleeping with Antonia (Gabriella Pession), one of the shareholders in the Blue faction for which he is currently employed. (Imagine Robert Kraft turning to Tom Brady for hand jobs instead of random massage parlors and you’re on the right track.) As a bookie, Tenax is privy to the knowledge that a member of the imperial family is badly in debt and ripe for exploitation.
The Roman Empire is currently ruled by the fledgling Flavian dynasty, established by the common-born general Vespasian (Hopkins). Contemplating his mortality, he’s faced with a choice of heir between his two sons. (Keep in mind that ancient Rome is not a Westeros-style situation where the oldest male automatically inherits; this, in fact, had never yet happened in the history of the empire.) Titus (Tom Hughes) is a general like his father, but he has a reputation for being too enamored with Berenice (Lara Wolf), the sexy Judaean queen whose people he subjugated and brought back to construct a grand new athletic amphitheater in his dynasty’s name. Seeing as how she’s secretly colluding with the Judaean slaves, people are right to doubt the guy.
Unfortunately for his sleazy but actually pretty smart and effective politician brother, Domitian (Jojo Macari), Titus has his father’s skill set as a soldier, and the old man sees the external threats posed by the barbarians of Europe and Asia as greater than political infighting. He taps Titus to succeed him, though Domitian vows to fight on.
Tenax and Scorpus may be his way forward. The two men approach the princeling with an offer: a 50 percent stake in their new faction, provided he approves it in his capacity as Master of the Games. While it’s not much compared to being a general, this gig isn’t like running Waystar Royco’s cruise lines: The chariot races, gladiator fights, and other violent athletic spectacles are important both to Rome’s economy and the placating of its working classes. Indeed, Domitian saves the palace from being sacked by rioters upset with his brother’s failure to deliver promised food shipments by suggesting an impromptu race be run as a diversion.
A pair of families from the outer reaches of the empire fill in the remaining side plots. Spanish brothers Elia (Gonçalo Almeida), Fonsoa (Pepe Barroso), and Andria (Eneko Sagardoy) bring elite-class Andalusian white horses to the capital in hopes of selling them to raise the funds for a breeding farm back home — or to get involved in the glitz and glamour of the races, depending on which brother you ask. They become key to the story when the horses are poisoned by Antonia in hopes of thwarting her lover Scorpus’s breakaway faction.
From the Numidia region of North Africa, we meet Cala (Sara Martins) and her three children, daughters Aura (Kyshan Wilson) and Jula (Alicia Ann Edogamhe) and ace-hunter son Kwame (Moe Hashim). In the episode’s most credulity-straining story line, all three of the kids wind up enslaved and brought to Rome, where they are immediately reunited not only with one another but with their mother, who comes chasing after them hoping to buy their freedom.
But Jula and Aura find themselves embroiled in the power struggle between Antonia and Tenax, each hired by one of the rival households, with Cala serving as a go-between to ferret out information for Tenax. Despite his small stature, Kwame parlays his hunting skills into a gladiator gig, where he’s expected to croak fast and hard. Instead, he forges an alliance with Viggo (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), a big, friendly Northman slated to die at the hands of a much bigger, much-less-friendly fighter named Flamma (Martyn Ford). Viggo’s experience with Roman weaponry and Kwame’s experience taking down much larger prey could make them a formidable team if they pool their expertise.
There’s also a big CGI albino lion, which seems worth mentioning.
What there isn’t is anything that’s gonna leap out and grab you as especially artistically vital. Rheon, Macari, Pession, and (despite the goofy foreign-guy accent) Leonidas all appear to be having a grand old time, which is pleasant to see. The Spanish and Numidian characters are given little more to do than be concerned about each other in a noble way, which is boring to watch. The chariot races are reasonably exciting, and there’s promise of gladiator-versus-lion fights to come. The bottom line is: There’s summer television to be found here.