Review of The Stolen Eagle

This series seems to have largely faded from memory and based on this episode, which is the only one I managed to finish (albeit barely), I can understand why. First of all, the dialogue. Could they take more effort to have everyone sound like they live in the 21st century? I would not even have been surprised if someone took a phone out of his toga to take a selfius. Next up, the writing. Yes, the stealing of the eagle is only a plot device to bring the two main characters together, I can see that. But can it maybe be a bit more believable than having two conspicuous blue idiots enter the Roman camp apparently unseen and take one of its most important artifacts? Not to mention the very lucky convenience of finding it after stumbling on the abductors of Octavius. Then, the visuals, which are highly praised, but I found it to be somewhat off-putting and cheap looking - but this can be a matter of taste I guess. Finally, also much talked about, the nudity and sex. Now, I am not offended or prude or anything, and maybe it is indeed the case that this is how it was back then. It's just that it's distracting from the story and drags down the pacing, and it is clearly done to draw in viewers. A bit more restraint would have really helped here. Like with Pompey being offered his new wife. Yes, it's important to the story how Caesar uses Atia to achieve this, and how Atia goes about it, including offering up the sex straight away as an incentive. But just leave it at the implication - showing her undressing and all that is just dragging it down and only there because "omg titties!!"

All in all then, this basically serves as my review of the entire show, because I just couldn't make it past this episode; I was glad to turn it off and not at all motivated to keep going, even though it's supposed to get a bit better. Coming back to why this show is forgotten, I also suspect GoT has something to do with that, which is basically "this but better", at least in the first four seasons.