Have you ever watched one of Roland Emmerich’s appreciably bonkers epics and thought to yourself: “What if this had way less action, looked even cheaper, was densely packed with interchangeable and barely sketched characters played by actors you don’t recognize, and was like 10 hours long?” If you have, there’s a new show that’s right up your alley. Peacock’s Those About To Die, a saga of ancient Rome, mixes familiar ingredients — namely, graphic violence, labyrinthine schemes, ruthless ambition, and gratuitous sex — from acclaimed prestige dramas like Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Vikings, and, well, Rome, to form a totally frictionless, flavorless broth composed entirely of stuff you’ve seen many times before.
The series follows a handful of listless storylines. Tenax (Iwan Rheon from, yes, Game of Thrones) owns and operates a very successful Roman gambling parlor, but desires more wealth and status, betting that upcoming political turmoil might up his odds. And maybe it will, as Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins, billed here largely as the star of the show but who actually turns up all too briefly) is old and dying and has to choose between which of his shitty sons, either Titus (Tom Hughes) or Domitian (Jojo Macari). will succeed him. There’s also a lengthy subplot about the formation of a new team of gladiators (yes, apparently there are gladiator franchises) that Tenax hopes will skyrocket him to fortune and glory. Then there’s Cala (Sara Martins), a mother whose daughters (Kyshan Wilson and Alicia Edogambe) have been enslaved. Her son Kwame (Moe Hashim), then, is forced to become a gladiator. Oh, and there’s also Scorpus (Dimitri Leonidas), an asshole alcoholic chariot racer. And this list only accounts for roughly half of the major and supporting players that viewers are asked to track through this slog.
Ultimately, it seems like series creator and writer Robert Rodat’s goal with Those About to Die is just to shove as much historical detail as he can into the show, which would account for the many, many disparate storylines. But despite the hemming and hawing about the political and military fate of Rome, the series’ chariot race aspect certainly takes up most of its running time. And while executive producer (and director of the first two episodes) Emmerich is known primarily for over-the-top spectacle, what gets served up here is sub-cable TV garbage. The gladiatorial combat and horse racing are almost entirely green-screened, none of it looking even remotely convincing, and every drop of blood is just a bright red digital glop. The compositions alternate between crummy CG wide shots and cutaways to close-ups of actors pretending to ride or fight, and since the characters are either redshirt combat slaves or actors whose storylines are only vaguely of interest, there’s no weight to any of the violence. Worse, since this all makes the majority of each episode, Those About to Die‘s intended viscerality becomes as repetitive a slog to watch as the leadenness of the alleged drama surrounding it.
What’s left at the end of the day is a very expensive, but somehow still very cheap-looking knockoff of better projects, and absent anything distinctive even added to the recipe. The plotlines never satisfactorily intertwine, nor does the show take its many opportunities to say anything about how the more brutal aspects of Roman life — politics, sport, race, etc. — reflect on or dialog with anything going on in our contemporary world. Those About to Die is simply a stultifying exercise in frustration.
DIRECTOR: Roland Emmerich & Marco Kreuzpaintner; CAST: Anthony Hopkins, Iwan Rheon, Tom Hughes, Sara Martins; DISTRIBUTOR: Peacock; STREAMING: July 18; RUNTIME: 9 hr. 20 min.
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