Serious #Downfall vibes in the series finale of #Rome. I’m not an educated classicist and I know they had to change things for the show and its collapsing budget by this point, but I’m a bit skeptical that the real story was like this.
No wonder people see this show as a precursor to Game of Thrones - I may get round to watching that. I’ll have to rewatch season 1 later.
I also just bought Ten Caesars and will read it soon.
@GrittyLipids@bookstodon I really liked the first season of Rome, but season 2 was something of a disappointment and pretty removed from the actual history. But the show did get me interested in reading Colleen McCullough’s excellent Masters of Rome series of historical novels. She sticks very close to the real history while telling a good story.
@GrittyLipids@bookstodon Tom Holland’s Rubicon, an excellent short history of the last century of the Roman republic, was the first book I read after watching Rome, and it really made me want to read some fiction set in the period (and that’s when I found McCullough’s at-the-time ongoing series).
Yeah, I didn’t have HBO until very recently. I remember people talking about how good it was and how much they wanted more money/seasons, and now it makes sense.
I also never watched game of thrones when it was new, but I’m watching the first episode now and it’s like…ah, right, not only is it a thinner imitation of Rome, but no wonder it looks and sounds like this.
@GrittyLipids@bookstodon The first few seasons of GOT are better than the later seasons. So if you already think it’s meh, then it might not be worth it.
I watched it all, but largely for “sunk cost fallacy” reasons, and wanted to know how it would end lol
We’ll see, I’m A: tired after getting up at 4:20 AM to take my wife to an 8 AM appointment, B: not sleeping well anyway and C: having a few beers, plus D: I don’t watch a lot of dramatic TV, so it may take a bit longer for me than most people.
But I’m biased towards real history, which I’m also trying to account for. I’ve missed out on a lot of things in life for reasons, so maybe this will be different.
@GrittyLipids@bookstodon Same. I also prefer historical or educational content. I used to watch a lot of fictional / scripted stuff, but I barely what it anymore. It could be that my tastes have changed over time, or it could be the quality of fictional stuff just isn’t what it used to be.
I’d say that’s taste changing. The myth of decline is real and applies to everything cultural.
My big issue is that I know so much about real people that it’s really hard for fictional people to get my attention, especially if they’re trying to say “look at this fictional person making fictional hard choices, doesn’t that suck?” because I can just go point at the mountain of things I know about real people making harder ones.
I imagine this is true for a good number of people, and I further imagine that this is why fictional shows seem to have a lot of naked people, a lot of insane fantasy/sci-fi violence, or both.