A still from ‘Those About to Die’.
| Photo Credit: Peacock/YouTube
After Tudor England, ancient Rome is another cornucopia that content creators have raided forever. William Wyler’s Ben-Hur is something of a gold standard. That jolly mix of friends turning against each other, a nobleman being condemned to becoming a galley slave and redeeming himself on the arena are irresistible. And that chariot race is! Eleven minutes of heart-stopping thrill, where the only sound is of the thundering hooves and the whistle of air as the horses and their rider make the tight turns on the spine, never fails to thrill.
Those About to Die (Season 1)
Directors: Roland Emmerich, Marco Kreuzpaintner
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Dimitri Leonidas, Jojo Macari, Gabriella Pession, Iwan Rheon, Sara Martins, Moe Hashim, Tom Hughes
Episodes: 10
Run time: 50 – 58 minutes
Storyline: The story of the games in ancient Rome told through the eyes of the patricians and plebs
Master of disaster, Roland Emmerich, seems to be the man to helm this story of the games in ancient Rome. Emmerich, who has given us jaw-dropping spectacle in films such as Independence Day and 2012, is out of sorts in this adaptation of Daniel P. Mannix’s Those About to Die. The book, which is supposed to be a non-fiction account of the history of the games, plays fast and loose with history but is supremely entertaining for all that. Incidentally, Mannix’s book was also an inspiration for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, whose sequel is coming out in November 2024 (yay).
Now that we have got all the background out of the way, let us get into Those About to Die, which is what gladiators said to Caesar before fighting each other to death. All who thought of AC/DC get full marks for their music taste, we salute you. All this distraction and going down various pop culture rabbit holes is thanks to the all-round tediousness show.
Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins) rules with twinkly-eyed gravitas while his sons, the warrior general Titus (Tom Hughes) and the politician Domitian (Jojo Macari), go about the business of keeping the empire running. Grain shortages have kept the public on a short fuse, and one way to distract them is with games in the Coliseum.
The games have many stakeholders, from the patricians to those who run the betting houses, the gladiators, trainers, charioteers, medics, stable boys, and slaves. Tenax (Iwan Rheon), who grew up on the streets, is the master of the seamy side of the games, setting right whatever needs fixing, from games to races and annoying senators.
Anthony Hopkins in ‘Those About to Die’.
| Photo Credit:
Peacock/YouTube
There are many threads to the tale. There is the Imperial power struggle, the fight between the four charioting factions, with Tenax setting the cat among the pigeons by starting a fifth faction with star charioteer Scorpus (Dimitri Leonidas). Numidian Cala (Sara Martins-Court) finds work with Tenax only as a way to free her daughters Jula (Alicia Edogamhe) and Aura (Kyshan Wilson), who were sold as slaves.
Jula is a slave at the house of the Blue faction leader Marsus (Rupert Penry-Jones), and his wife Antonia (Gabriella Pession) and Tenax see an opportunity for some spying. Cala’s son, Kwame (Moe Hashim), is sold as a gladiator, and we get to see a day in the life of a gladiator, which includes swapping sentimental stories of home with cellie, Viggo (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) and playing David to the Goliath-size gladiator, Flamma (Martyn Ford).
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Everyone does their evil and pointless machinations while mouthing dialogue woodener than the swords they spar with. There is a lot of gratuitous sex and bloodletting — just one example is the search for that legendary “man with the scar”, that is conducted in a brothel, voyeuristically peeping at various moaning couplings. One is willing to forget the cardboard characters, the historical inaccuracies, the dreadful acting (poor Anthony Hopkins!), and planet-sized plot holes if only Emmerich had given us breath-taking spectacle — we are not very different from our Latin counterparts, with our craving for bread and circuses!
Unfortunately, the games are mind-numbing, with the chariot races and gladiatorial battles dully repetitive. By the time of the climax with the flooding of the amphitheatre, and releasing the crocodiles to attack the treacherous senators, one is exhausted and uncaring and even the morose hippopotamus grunting in its cell does not create a flutter of interest.
Those About to Die is streaming on Amazon Prime Video