Rome
 

I've just started watching the first season of the HBO series of Rome this weekend on DVD and I must say...I'm enjoying it, but this is really somewhat pushing the whole "This is an HBO show." card too much.

So far the episodes are great and they pretty much follow the historical happenings prior and up to when Julies Caesar marched back into Rome to take power from Pompey -igniting a civil war.

But what I talked about earlier is that this show, even for someone like me, pushes it's limits a little too much. I'm talking about the amount of just straight up blatant nudity and sex that comes up almost every 6 or 7 minutes....it'll just happen...there will be a good 5-10 minutes of plot, action, conspiracy, whatever and then....BOOM two people are naked and doing it very loudly. Not a show to watch with the kids...and it's not just that R-rated movie "hey look theirs boobs!" nudity either..just in two episodes you see every private area known on both the male and female bodies multiple times...enough to make anyone watching the show with anyone else feel uncomfortable - especially when you have to listen to immense orgasming for 5 minutes.

I understand that it's "Rome" and that the Romans were doing it all the time but I wonder if all this is necessary or if they are in fact trying to push the whole "We're an HBO show" card too hard...there would be no reason to, it's a pretty good show anyway when you take the naked women out.

Re: Rome
 

It's a joint venture with the BBC mind you. If you are not willing to watch shows push limits than don't watch cable TV shows. HBO and Showtime have pushed the limits for over two decades now. Sex and prostitution were quite rampant in the Roman empire. Although not quite historically accurate i applaud the series for showing Rome's lower classes to an extent most movies or TV shows have never gone. I find it a bit odd that you have problem seeing naked women but don't care about a man having the pointy end of a mace jabbed slowly into his spine.

To put it simple tits were as much a part of life as they were two thousand years ago as they are now.

Re: Rome
 

I now have a need to watch this show more than I did before...Violence, ancient history, Rome, AND sex? How much is the box sex...Set?

Re: Rome
 

The price is really expensive like pretty much every HBO box set.

Amazon has it for $66.

Re: Rome
 

QFT!

How can you not like the idea of a DVD box that contains action, a good plot and a bit of soft porn all rolled into one? To me its just a must have.

Re: Rome
 

Rome is great, I especially like Vorenus and Pullo, but from the second season on I also started to like some of the other characters, mostly because the political intrigues are getting better and better.

Yes, there is a lot of sex and violence, but I think it is good of HBO to show things as they really were. Rome isn't 100% accurate, but because of things like hardcore-nudity you get a better understanding of how people of this time thought and felt.
Simply showing the violence (the cutting of throats is just as explicitly shown as the African-slave-with-giant-dick-present) while ignoring all the sex wouldn't make any sense in a show like Rome.

Re: Rome
 

It's not that I find it a problem seeing it - I'm absolutely alright with nudity (especially female nudity) and sex but what I'm getting at here is that I just am not seeing the point of explicitly showing people screwing every 5 minutes of every damn episode.

I understand that sex and nudity and all that jazz was a part of Roman culture, but this isnt a show about sexual Roman culture (in a sense)...it's a show about Julius Caesar and the civil war he ignites.

The show would be fine if they toned it down a little bit...and if it did suck without all the nudity and sex then obviously it's not a good show is it? This is the first time that I've ever even been overwhelmed with the amount of sex and nudity of a movie/show, it just seems a little..useless and unnecessary to the plot.

Yet again I want to make it clear to you all that I have no problem with sex and nudity at all - I'm just questioning its excessiveness' relevance to the point of the show in the first place.

Re: Rome
 

I love Rome, great show. Second season is pretty awesome, too bad its the last. Vorenus is the king of vengeance, he goes big or goes home for sure. In the end, Marc Antony is the man, favourite character in the show for sure. Was odd to see him with a beard in the latest episode, but he's still awesome.

Atia is one hell of a milf.

Re: Rome
 

I know right....DAMN...when you see her totally naked in the first episode it's just like the Keanu Reeves "woah..."

Re: Rome
 

It's too bad this is the last season of rome.

Re: Rome
 

Really? There are only going to be 2 seasons?

Re: Rome
 

Yup, the show is just too expensive to make. Apparently, HBO and BBC spent more than $100 million on the first season alone. The thousands of costumes, props and the massive sets are rather expensive. This means the second season has to achieve quite a bit story-wise.

Re: Rome
 

Yeah - that sounds right. Well, it's a shame...they should've just done a nice long and well directed HBO mini series (like Band of Brothers) instead of trying to make it into a show.

Re: Rome
 

Actually, that's what it was ment to be, but it was so impressive, they made a show of it.

Re: Rome
 

Yeah but Band of Brothers was immensely impressive...they didnt try and make a show outta that? Yet - that was a book which had a starting and stopping point so yeah...

It is too bad that they're going to stop after this season...I was very impressed with episodes 3 and 4 that I watched the other night.

Yet - I guess given the time period you could only go on for something for so long...season one goes up through the Civil War and Caesar's death and doesnt season 2 go up and through the war between Octavian/Marc Antony and Brutus/Cassius? Another season would have to cover the "war" between Antony and Octavian yet beyond that...things kinda cool down so it would have to stop there.

Re: Rome
 

We know what happened exactly during band of brothers, there was no way to get away from the plot of that show, while rome had a chance to tell events and tell a new story.