Reviews

Could barely last five minutes. First off, Spartans ARE Greek. If a "documentary" is false in the first 2 minutes, what else is inaccurate? In the endeavor to relay facts and teach, details are extremely , indeed, of paramount, importance. I weary of poorly researched, made-up, or staged sensationalist drivel. Nature, Science, and History ARE interesting enough without ridiculous embellishment.

It's a History Channel clone. An over-dramatized production of historical events in an historically false manner, with an occasional talking head. Regardless of their credentials, which I'm sure they've earned, the commentators' semi-scripted narrative comes off flat. Perhaps due to the editor's cherry picking of what they said for "effect"? Docu-Dramas can and have worked very well before. This one didn't. The needless outright falsifying of seemingly minor events made the historian in me cringe. (For example: Faustina the Younger died of an apparent accident, and she was interred at Hadrian's Mausoleum in Rome.) I couldn't tell if this was a movie, or a documentary. As I wrote first, this is the History Channel's M.O., and the biggest reason I stopped watching that channel.

Now, a good show does not need a big budget, and a big budget does not mean a good show. Having conveyed that sentiment, I feel there was plenty of budget to go around for a good show, but it was poorly used. The CGI backgrounds were passable. With a documentary, or indeed, a pure drama, backgrounds are not the feature like in an action film. But with current CGI capabilities, I felt they lacked for money rather than talent. The physical sets and costumes were pretty and cool, but erroneous to the historian's eye. I also did not expect Emmy (or Oscar) winning performances from the actors, and was neither disappointed, nor surprised.