Those About to Die streams on Peacock beginning Thursday, July 18.
It’s not particularly surprising that a historical epic starring Anthony Hopkins is coasting entirely on the charisma of one actor. But it might be surprising to learn that the actor is not Anthony Hopkins. In fact, the man who once dared to liven up a late-period Transformers movie seems positively exhausted by the brief amount of screentime he has in Those About to Die, Peacock’s new drama set in Ancient Rome and based on the book of the same name by Daniel P. Mannix (the novel that also inspired Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.) Granted, Hopkins’ Emperor Vespasian (pronounced “Vespasianus” in the show’s intermittent use of Latin) is perpetually on the brink of death – the better to fuel the ambitions of his two sons, Domitian (Jojo Macari) and Titus (Tom Hughes) – but that just calls to mind the breathtaking work Paddy Considine did as a monarch crawling closer and closer to his demise in the first season of House of the Dragon.
The real star of Those About to Die is also a reminder of televised George R.R. Martin adaptations – because it’s Game of Thrones’ Iwan Rheon, a.k.a. the vile and villainous Ramsay Bolton. A lucky, late addition to the cast, Rheon plays a big-scheming social-climber named Tenax. He runs the gambling at Circus Maximus, Rome’s venue for chariot racing and effectively its main economic draw… for now. Major competition is on its way in the form of Emperor Vespasian’s Flavian Amphitheater, the arena for gladiatorial combat better known these days as The Colosseum. The Colosseum’s construction is a frequent topic in these episodes, and, to varying extents, it drives the plot for the various interconnected storylines that make up Those About to Die. The Emperor, along with his sons (one a scheming politician, the other an accomplished soldier with a short fuse), is building it to distract the unruly citizens of Rome and to leech some power and influence away from the four color-coded teams – Red, Blue, Green, and White – who race at Circus Maximus and have ties to the city’s cultural, political, and religious elites.
This seems like a silly gimmick dreamed up for Those About to Die, but there’s factual basis for these so-called “factions,” though they were more like race-car sponsors than the shadowy cabal of competing kingpins depicted here. In Tenax’s eyes, starting a faction of his own could take him to the upper reaches of Roman society, but this desire is also annoyingly rooted in secret reasons teased by his voiceover narration in the very first episode. He also, curiously, notes that Tenax is not his real name, though the ultimate explanation doesn’t necessarily justify the secrecy. His story gets a boost from being the most closely intertwined with the on-and-off track drama of the chariot races, which are the best thing in the show, and, thanks to minimal involvement of real-life figures (other than Dimitri Leonidas’ Scorpus, the hotshot GOAT of chariot racing), the part where the writers and performers can take the most creative liberties.
Everything else in Season 1 feels comparatively boring at best and pointless at worst. There’s also a trio of horse merchants from Spain (Pepe Barroso, Eneko Sagardoy, and Goncalo Almeida) vying to enter the racing business and a woman from Africa (Sara Martins) whose children (Moe Hashim, Kyshan Wilson, and Alicia Edogamhe) were captured and enslaved by Roman soldiers. Hashim’s character is forced into a gladiator training program and embarks on a quest for vengeance that seems particularly familiar in the wake of the Gladiator II trailer. But Rheon is the most engaging actor of the bunch, and his storyline is also easily the best one.
It doesn’t help that other storylines are dragged down by some distractingly shaky performances from prominent supporting characters. One of the Emperor’s sons has a lover who seems to exist only so he can solicit exposition, constantly posing soft-spoken questions like “How do you feel about that?” or “What do you plan to do next?” Unless it’s a brilliant attempt to integrate a Talking Dead-style post-show discussion panel into the narrative itself, it’s terrible. (Actually, if it’s doing that, it’s still terrible.)
But the gladiatorial combat and chariot races are a blast, particularly when the swordplay goes full cartoon and limbs are sliced through like blood-spurting sticks of butter. (This is one of the benefits of having an action guy like Roland Emmerich among the series’ directors.) Sometimes it seems like these scenes were plucked from a different, more interesting show, not only because they’re more viscerally entertaining than the palace intrigue stuff (imagine that), but because Those About to Die doesn’t insist on holding our hand through them. Every single time a new location is introduced, there’s huge onscreen text explaining that we’re looking at the empire’s treasury or “the site of Rome’s eternal flame,” but the sequences that are all about spectacle are allowed to just be spectacle.
When the premiere shows some weird system of bells and fish-shaped buckets suspended high above Circus Maximus, nobody leans into frame to say “that’s how they mark which lap of the race they’re on.” We understand what they’re for because it’s obvious in context. Such trust isn’t extended elsewhere: We’d know a character’s location if they marched into a heavily guarded building and demanded to see the empire’s hoard of treasure, yet the word “treasury” still flashes on screen.
On the flipside of the comprehension coin is Those About to Die’s tendency to pepper its dialogue with Latin words like “dignitas” or “plebian.” Pair this attempt at authenticity with the fact that a lot of characters look or sound the same and have complicated Roman names, and it becomes as hard to follow as any high-fantasy story littered with made-up words and names. It requires too much of an effort from the audience for how little payoff there is. It’s easier, and more fulfilling, to just track who’s killing whom in the arena.
It’s a symptom of the show wishing it could be too many things: A gripping historical drama full of political intrigue, a revenge story, and a crowd-pleasing “good vs. evil” action romp set in the world of Roman bloodsports. But only one of those stories is any fun, and it’s the one that has some novelty to it and doesn’t look like reheated House of the Dragon leftovers.
