Spartacus

[JamesF]

Spartacus: Blood & Sand (2010)
Spartacus: Gods Of The Arena (2011)
Spartacus: Vengeance (2012)
Spartacus: War Of The Damned (2013)

So now this has just aired its last episode in the States, anyone else going to 'fess up to having been brilliantly entertained by it?

For me this has been one of the biggest TV surprises of the last decade. For its first four episodes or so, it is every bit the lazy 300 ripoff you expect from a cable TV show produced by Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi, though trashy fun in its own right. Then a few episodes in, a very unexpected switch happens (I suspect largely due to Carnivale's Daniel Knauf joining the writers' room): dull one-dimensional characters suddenly become layered and tragic, generic plots suddenly become intricate and unpredictable, its creaky CGI-and-slo-mo-violence comic book aesthetic starts to feel truly epic and scarcely repetitious. It maintains that standard for basically the entire rest of the series too, though the final season has suffered only slightly due to the necessity of having to introduce so many new characters.

And no, it doesn't hurt that it's also been by some large margin the goriest and most sexually explicit (not to mention most sexually diverse, commendably embracing the polysexuality of the Roman era) TV show in memory, often breathtakingly so.

[bdlover]

Yes, a unique blend of the sublime and the ridiculous - mostly the ridiculous, but rarely the poorer for it! Went horribly astray in the 2nd season (Vengeance) I feel, from which the single memorable moment was a man's brain sliding out of his face, but then picked up again for the finish.