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Rome: The Complete Series

1 rating: 5.0

Drama, Military & War, and Television movie directed by Adam Davidson, Alan Poul, Alan Taylor, Alik Sakharov, and Allen Coulter

Four hundred years after the founding of the Republic, Rome is the wealthiest city in the world, a cosmopolitan metropolis of one million people, epicenter of a sprawling empire. But now, the city's foundations are crumbling, eaten away by corruption … see full wiki

Tags: Movies, Drama Movies

Cast: Ray Stevenson, Kerry Condon, Polly Walker, James Purefoy, Kevin McKidd

Director: Alan Taylor, Adam Davidson, Alan Poul, Alik Sakharov, Allen Coulter

Genre: War, Television, Drama

1 review about Rome: The Complete Series

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One of the best TV series is finally on Blu-Ray

Dec 14, 2009

by jamesliu

Exclusive to the Lunch Network

Rating:

HBO's Rome was perhaps one of the most ambitious historical based show ever produced, it features the late Republic era Rome (from the late First Triumvirate to the conclusion of the Second Triumvirate and the establishment of the Roman Empire). The show was shot in Rome (Cinecittà studios outside of Rome) and employeed a lot of local Romans for authenticity (although most of the lead actors/actresses are British), and it definitely showed, when you watch the show, you felt you are transported into the first century BC Rome, and how people lived in those days. Unlike a lot of other shows based on Ancient Rome, the narratives are mostly told through two common soldiers (Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, roughly based on the actual historical counterparts, although a lot of liberties has been taken to make them woven more tightly into the story), so not only are we getting a lot of politicial intrigue and the decadence of the Roman aristocracy, but we are also getting to see how the underside of the Roman society lived.

The show was canceled after only two seasons due to enormous cost for shooting the show, which is a shame, I would really love to see the show evolve from the creator's original vision: "I discovered halfway through writing the second season the show was going to end. The second was going to end with the death of Brutus. Third and fourth season would be set in Egypt. Fifth was going to be the rise of the messiah in Palestine. But because we got the heads-up that the second season would be it, I telescoped the third and fourth season into the second one, which accounts for the blazing speed we go through history near the end. There's certainly more than enough history to go around." (from the interview with one of co-creator of the show Bruno Heller), The second season definitely felt rushed through and was not nearly as good as the first season, but given the constraint to wrap up the story, I think they did as good a job as they can.

When the show ended, I wanted to get the DVD set, but upon learning that they are also releasing it on Blu-Ray, I held off on the purchase and preordered the Blu-Ray version as soon as it was available, it was definitly worth the wait. The Rome: the complete series came with 10 Blu-Ray disc, and the discs came inside a beautiful book like binding, when you turn the pages, you'll see on the left side a picture from the show and a brief description on the episodes, and the discs containing those episodes neatly stored on the right side of the page, and it also came with a book mark, which is an ingenious idea that you can use it to keep track of which disc you left off. Compare to the oversized Battlestar Galactica Blu-Ray, the packaging for Rome is simple yet elegant, and it fits in with the rest of your Blu-Ray/DVD collections on your shelf.

The video and audio quality are also top notch, each episode is full HD (1080p) in 16:9 aspect ratio with DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound, and it has pretty much all the extra you'd expect from such a release, a lot of the episodes came with audio commentary tracks, and you can also enable a couple of interactive modes (This is Blu-Ray only) during episode playback that will show historical facts and character/Roman family relationships.

All in all, I loved the show and I loved the series on Blu-Ray, and I highly recommend anyone who has any interest in Ancient Rome to pick this up, and you won't regret it!

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