Spartacus: Blood & Sand & Tushie

IT'S A LITTLE bit difficult for me to figure out what to say about SPARTACUS: BLOOD & SAND. (TMN, 9pm) the first two episodes of which I caught via screener.


I have to say off the bat that my love for the sandals & swordplay genre has been pretty well sated now. After Gladiator & Rome, & the passing-interesting 300 & my long-ago memories of I Claudius, I'm not sure what there is to say.  


And that's where bias gives way to the headshake of pragmatism.  Of course, there's nothing really to say -- it's all about show now, now that those nifty slo-mo ramp shots and lovingly gross splattery blood effects can be made on a TV budget. And that's when I start to drift off and put on a different hat.


But first, the basics. This is indeed the retelling of Spartacus -- a warrior consigned to slavery after betrayal by a weaselly but ambitious Roman commander,  and ripped from the bosom (oh yes, literally) of his extremely hot wife, only to be reborn as the greatest of gladiators. 


The script is a bit stiff, written in that "heroic adventure" patois that makes this very 2010 series feel almost old-fashioned. After the wit and realism of Rome, it's a bit disappointing. (Although there is gusto in coming up with scatalogical curses involving not very-flattering terms for parts of the human anatomy.)


There's life every time John Hannah and Lucy Lawless are on screen, but in between that it's a whole lot of blood spatter in slo-mo and -- did I mention -- a whole wack of nudity, of both the male and female stripe.


Spartacus: Blood & Sand is an original series from the Starz! cable network in the USA,  produced in New Zealand by Rob Tapert -- who's partnered with Sam Raimi, who of course is no stranger to either blood & guts or shooting in New Zealand. It's deliberately shot entirely against greenscreen -- so there are no sets, which makes for a heavily CGI look.


The look, again, is one of those things you're either going to go with or not.  At least until the crazy technology of Cameron's Avatar filters down to the TV level, heavy CGI shows are forced to make a choice -- deploy the tools to try and get as close to real-looking as possible, knowing that the matching might occasionally -- on a TV timeline -- not quite work when lined up against the real elements, or just embrace the artificiality.


Spartacus opts for the latter route. The whole thing is lit and shot in a way that's meant to evoke the graphic novel experience.  So the transitions are flashy, and the frame is always full, and instead of realism everything looks stylized and painterly.  You're either going to go with that or you won't.


Did I mention there's nudity?


Anyway, as I was sitting there trying to figure out what I thought of the show, I found myself thinking about it as example, as product -- as example for what's getting made out there, and for what it might teach us about where the market goes next.


And from there it's a lot easier to see the show's appeal.  Attractive cast...lots of violence, story always moving forward, good visuals, bunch o'sex and fight scenes. It's diverting, for sure, and it's pretty well paced.  But the true test of the show was when I put it on again while I was playing cards yesterday, so people could see what it looked like.


The show very clearly reverses the TV usual of being dialogue-driven, or at least demanding that it be listened to. This is a show that's probably destined to do very well internationally because you can watch it, hear nothing, and figure out most of the story. It's that visually driven.  I suppose that's smart when it comes to export.  It's an interesting exercise watching how they choose to tell the story visually rather than through dialogue at almost every step.


So in the end, personally, there's more to admire in Spartacus than necessarily enjoy.  It looks gorgeous, it's competent popcorn entertainment -- and if you're working in TV you should probably watch it, because shows like it may just be your bread & butter over the next several years.