I borrowed the first season of the Rob Tappert and Sam Raimi produced Spartacus. It was for the Starz cable channel. It's pretty naughty and violent. Maybe somewhat more than HBO's Rome. In one of the interviews in the dvd Special Features someone said that Starz wanted the producers to make sure there's a lot of male nudity in the show. Sure enough, there's plenty-o-manass. Mind you, there's rashers of nudity in the show in general. Seems like there's a naked lady every time you turn your head. Lots of humping too, they are a randy lot those Romans. I guess it fills in the time between murdering and being murdered.
The Thracian who became Spartacus and the men of his village are soldiering for a Roman General. They rebel when he tries to force them out of the area, they want to stay and protect their own villages from some other threat, and he burns their village in retaliation. Spartacus gets condemned to die in the arena and his wife is sold as a slave. Spartacus chops his four opponents into pieces and the blood flows. The crowd loves a good slaughter and the top guy commutes his sentence and sells him to John Hannah. Lucy Lawless, real life wife of Rob Tappert, and star of Xena, The Warrior Princess, plays his wife. They are a vile social climbing couple with little feeling for anyone but themselves. They plot and scheme to gain power and status. When Spartacus finds out tht John is responsible for the death of his wife he vows to get revenge and that slave revolt is born.
I enjoyed parts of the show, some of those naked ladies, but got tired of the interpersonal melodrama at times. Most of the characters are just awful people, no problem with them getting theirs at some point. They make the worse decisions and everyone dies, including them. The show looks pretty good, not quite as opulent as Rome but not too bad. There isn't much location shooting, most of it inside on a soundstage, which is then added to with some CGI backgrounds and sky. Not something that I'd bother to buy now that I have seen it and a good reason for NetFlix.
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