Season Two of
Rome.
I'd watched 2/3 of this HBO/BBC co-production on TV a few months ago before a memory-related PVR malfunction meant that I missed the remaining episodes. My local video store is doing TV series rentals for £7 a week no matter how many discs in the season set so I thought, "What the heck".
The show has always been more
Up Pompeii than
I, Claudius and probably all the better for it. Decadence drips from every scene, the art direction is absolutely wonderful and each cast member (wo)manfully goes up to 11.
Ultimately, season two succumbs to what I can only imagine to be
The Deadwood Syndrome - The producers hear about the show's impending cancellation half way through shooting so compress 10 episodes into 8 while shoehorning an entire third season into the remaining 2 programmes - and it's a real shame.
The last few years have been a Golden Age for TV drama - The Sopranos, Carnivale, The Wire and the mighty Deadwood to name but four - and Rome deserves its place in the Pantheon (see what I did there?
). Sadly, like many an Emperor, it didn't serve its full term.
Carry on, Cleo...