Spartacus: Gods of the Arena

HBO’s Rome was one of my favourite TV shows ever. Sweeping, gritty, vivid, unflinching in its depiction of the savage tumult of the world of the Late Republic, with characters that doled out violence and treachery with abandon but remained broadly sympathetic. Though well-acted and plotted, Rome was frequently grisly and salacious, rarely shying away from the seedy and sensational.

Spartacus makes Rome’s most debauched episodes look like a cycling holiday in the Cotswolds. It is boldly, proudly, triumphantly depraved, brandishing its own stylistic excess like a honed blade to slice boredom out of everyone’s lives. Yours Truly started with the prequel, Gods of the Arena, made while the show’s leading man was absent undergoing sadly unsuccessful cancer treatment. Despite unnecessarily giving away the finale of the first season (fortunately only spoiling a development that anyone owning a basic familiarity with the period could have predicted), the prequel holds up as an entertaining and propulsive story in its own right, filled with shout-outs for established fans to appreciate but still accessible for new viewers.

Beginning with a gory statement of intent, as a bisected head slaps onto the sand only seconds into the action, Spartacus briskly ensures that the faint-hearted will be encouraged to bow out early, so they don’t have time to get invested before being horrified and alienated. A storm of enthusiastically delivered curses soundtracks the ultraviolent gladiatorial brawls, soon followed by spectacular carnal acrobatics as hotshot swordsman Ganicus (who resembles a cross between Shawn Michaels and some ancient death god) is rewarded for his victories with a share in the licentious pleasures of the Roman elite.

The plot is brutally straightforward, although with a few twining turns along the way before its bloody conclusion. John Hannah’s Batiatus must juggle a stubborn father, a devoted yet scheming wife, and coldly ruthless rivals (including one especially snotty character, who resembles a caricature of an old-fashioned British public school prefect, in the best possible way), while struggling to make his gladiator training school the greatest stable of iron-hard warrior flesh that the mean streets of Capua have ever seen. Echoing HBO’s emphasis on Rome’s hopelessly class-segregated society, Gods of the Arena skips back and forth between the travails of the gladiators (who, for all their glamour and martial prowess, are ultimately property to be brutalised at will) and the household slaves, and the multiplying intrigues and deceits of the upper classes.

At only six episodes (the series proper is apparently much longer) Gods of the Arena rattles through the action quickly, which helps to keep up a giddy momentum. Consistently watchable and entertaining,

Spartacus even manages to pull off some weighty drama as events build to a climax; the ferocity and sensuality of the world it depicts helps to stoke the intensity bubbling beneath the fraught relationships of the characters, making them more than cut-outs who slaughter and copulate for the audience’s amusement. A tortured romance subplot strives gamely to provide the most compelling character drama of the series, but loses out to a troubled father-son relationship with no clear villain, as Batiatus Junior’s combination of amorality and earnest ambition clash with the values of his more honourable but more coldly conservative father.

At no point, however, does the show skimp on the violent thrills. It shamelessly indulges in the slow motion gimmickry popularised by Zack Snyder’s 300, but does a noticeably more competent job of using it than the big-budget director. While Snyder used slow-motion rather abruptly and unimaginatively (in fairness, this is something Spartacus sometimes does as well) Gods of the Arena uses it as primal punctuation for its desperate duels, lending queasy impact to each slice and blow.

Following a conclusion both triumphant and bleak, all the pieces have fallen into place for the arrival of the titular character himself, that legendary rebel who gave Rome’s bloated tyranny one of the greatest shocks in the violent history of the Republic. This demented show still has a long and bloody journey ahead of it.