HBO Videos Rome: The Complete Second Season

I don't like the second season quite as much as the first. But this is still my favorite TV show of all time. HBO does such an amazing job with their casting and it really makes a difference. I also love the All Roads Lead to Rome feature that you can turn on for extra info about the history or significance of what is happening.

Great first series. looking forward to 2nd series. Quick delivery

Ah,it is with sweet sadness we view this sumptuous last season of Rome, the most lavishly produced and finely detailed series ever presented on TV. So much more story to tell that won't be, with a cast of historical and fictional characters in one of the most exciting and complex societies imaginable, full of intrigue, passion, violence, and humor. Like the Romans themselves the shows were chock-a-block with seeing, coming and conquering, and the delicious acting and witty scripts are to be savored. We could wish for more, but at least we have these. The final season centers on the aftermath of Julius Caesar's assassination/murder and the struggle between Brutus, Marc Antony and Octavian within the power vacuum thus created. James Purefoy's Antony emerges here in all his marvelous contradictions: beloved and often brilliant soldier, careless and licentious hedonist, and finally debauched yet pitiful lover in doomed alliance with Cleopatra. We also have the delicious final battle of wills and scheming between Atia and Sevilia, the rise of the precociously brilliant Octavian, adroit and ruthless, prudish and depraved. And we have the pursuit and destruction of Caesar's assassins culminating in the epic battle of Phillipa, and the redemptive and, in the end, nobel and courageous death of the tormented and conflicted Brutus. All of the above is history as presented, again, from the perspective of the Mutt and Jeff of the Roman world, Vorenus and Pullo, the legionaire everymen that allow us to see the underside of Roman history where the common people lived real lives amidst the gutters and and gangsters, shopkeepers and slaves, brothels and bakeries. Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson are a marvelous duo as the prudish and sternly middle-class Vorenus and the lusty, devil-may-care, yet loyal and true Pullo. I won't cite all the other actors but suffice it to say they are all splendid. The final season seems a bit rushed and crowded in the final episodes, no doubt because they knew of their cancellation and wanted to wrap up the series as best they could. I noted storylines that were ready for expansion, and it seemed obvious that the great drama of Antony and Cleopatra versus Ocatavian had to be truncated. While possibly a little too neat, at least they were allowed to bring the series to a finality (unlike the great Deadwood series, for example). Yes, I am sure Rome was an expensive proposition for HBO to continue. And I guess it never found the vast audience needed to justify HBO's budget. But, oh, what a shame! Something this beautifully done deserved a better fate. At any rate, we have these DVD boxed sets, which, by the way, are the most handsomely produced and packaged sets I own. Well worth the purchase and viewing by anyone who loves quality.

Ignore the pedants who complain about historical "inaccuracies". Nonsense! You can count the primary historical sources for the period on one hand, and all the commentators of the era, from Caesar to Cicero to Suetonius to Tacitus, to Sallust to Livy, had axes to grind. Jonathan Stamp, the historical consultant and co-producer, is a first-rate scholar and not window dressing. He's forgotten more about Roman history than those who complain here will ever know. There are huge and deep gaps in Roman history. The series fills in the gaps. This is the functon of historical fiction. The claimed "inaccuracies" are no more than disagreement with other speculations. For example, the nonsense about Atia: Tacitus says some nice things about her and Suetonius makes up some silly legend about omens. Silly people call this "history". Maybe she was virtuous, but there's no hard evidence one way or another, and the producers can portray her to suit. As it happens, Rome's Atia, like I Claudius' similarly "enhanced" Livia, is a delicious and, given her culture, thoroughly believable character. You can take the characters and events of Rome at face value, and you will be far ahead of the pack in knowledge of the period. I was sorry to see Max Pirkis's wonderful boy Octavian replaced by Simon Woods' Octavian Caesar, but time goes on, and, like Pirkis, Woods makes a chilling future Augustus. As in the first season, the second season illuminates the the way the different strata of Roman society meet common life situations, from career to marital to moral issues. Sometimes the strata converge by circumstance, as the characters of Rome encounter each other, usually briefly. But upward mobility is a deadly game in Rome, and those who play the game, on whatever level, inevitably pay the price. I wish HBO had decided to make Rome an ongoing series, for what comes after Augustus is, as we know, just as exciting, sordid, and suspensful as the story of Caesar and Augustus. Maybe out of respect we could hop over I Claudius and continue with the so-called Good Emperors or the Barracks Emperors. Trajan or Hadrian -- now, these are stories. Or Marcus Aurelius, the philisopher emperor who persecuted the Christians. Now, why did he do that? I'd love Stamp's speculations. Or later on, how about Constantine? Nothing ever produced about him, and yet his story is perhaps most exciting of them all -- his outmaneuvering his co-emperors, his weird personal life -- his murder of his wife and son -- his thing with Christianity, his building up of Byzantium, later Constantinople... Think of what Messrs. Heller, Milius, Apted, these great movie-makers, together with the resources of HBO and BBC, could do with that! I know there's lots of partisanship about the different HBO series. Many have run far longer than Rome has. This isn't because of quality but because Rome is probably the most expensive series HBO ever mounted. Sorry, Sopranos fanboys and girls, ditto Deadwood and, um, Carnivale... Soap operas about sleazy gangsters have their allure, as do "real westerns" and supernatural circuses. But none has the moral weight, the profoundly interesting history, the intrinsic quality of Rome. It is HBO's greatest series. I've been seeing this second season on Netflix. Not enough. This one's a keeper, I've ordered it to buy here. Hope the box is as nice as first season's.

I like my purchase very much.