If you're looking to turn in early on Sunday nights this fall, HBO's limited series Rome, a $100 million BBC co-production premiering this Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET and running for the next 12 weeks, may be just the ticket. Of the six episodes that were released for press review, half a dozen put me to sleep by the end of the hour. It was a gentle, lulling slumber, punctuated with faintly overheard scraps of dialogue from one of the show's copious banquet scenes ("More tench? A dormouse, perhaps?") or Senate-floor debates ("Caesar will have to accept or refuse the terms, because Mark Antony will immediately use the tribune's veto!").It's the exposition that's the problem, I've found. Cluttering up the story with a whole of of 'splainin' tends to bring momentum to a halt. If you're interested in the late Roman Republic and like historical fiction with a minimum of exposition, I've got a treat for you.
As if to compensate for these vast tracts of plodding exposition, Rome also offers up acres of writhing naked flesh and oceans of gore (often both at the same time, as in the first episode, when a topless woman bathes in bull's blood during a ritual sacrifice.) At least in terms of sheer volume of nude scenes per hour, Rome is the dirtiest series
Might I suggest the SPQR
series by John Maddox? With appearances by Caesar, Cicero, Crassus and Catilina, among others, the series' hero is Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, scion of an old Roman family who frequently finds himself in the soup, as Bertie Wooster might put it, because of his habit of solving murders. Roberts' Rome is full of politicians making backroom deals, forming secret alliances and covering up scandalous behavior. A sort of a Tammany Hall without the smoke-filled rooms. This modern reader, at least, feels completely at home there.
Short, fast-paced and funny--these books have no room for ponderous exposition.
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