TV Review: "Those About to Die"
The Peacock original series manages to be a surprisingly entertaining--if cluttered--piece of peplum melodrama.
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I wrote a few days ago about how much I enjoyed seeing the explicit queerness of Domitian in Peacock’s peplum drama Those About to Die. However, since I enjoyed the show in its entirety, I thought that it deserved its own review, so here we are. For a show that on paper shouldn’t work at all–I mean, it draws from a book I doubt many have heard of, has several episodes directed by master-of-shlock Roland Emmerich, and is on one of the lesser streamers–it does surprisingly well.
This series is notoriously difficult to summarize, mostly because there are just so many damn characters and storylines that it’s impossible to do them justice without getting lost in the weeds. To my mind, though, these are the most important characters. To begin with there’s Iwan Rheon’s Tenax, a crime lord whose tentacles reach into the highest echelons of power, right into the imperial family itself, which includes Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins) and his two sons bearded warrior Titus (Tom Hughes) and the very queer Domitian (Jojo Macari). Tenax yearns to create a new racing faction to compete with the other four (the Reds, Blues, Greens, and Whites) which are dominated and owned by members of the Senate, and he’s aided in this by the superstar charioteer Scorpus (Dimitri Leonidas). Numerous other storylines intersect with Tenax’s, but of these the ones concerning a trio of Spanish brothers and a Numidian family. Indeed, three characters emerge as particularly heroic: Numidian Cala (Sara Martins), who comes to Rome to save her enslaved children; Kwame (Moe Hashim), her son who becomes an unwilling gladiator; and Elia (Gonçalo Almeida), one of a trio of Spanish brothers. As the series goes on they all have their part to play in the arena and out of it.
Iwan Rheon’s Tenax is in some ways the paradigmatic antihero. He’s had to claw his way out of the gutter to achieve what little bit of power and influence he now possesses, and he’s not going to let anything–not even a broken leg and an imperial coup–stand in the way. By the time the season ends he’s secured a lucrative position as the aedile ludi and Domitian’s fixer, though it remains to be seen whether the new emperor will remain loyal to his accomplice. After all, how much can you really trust a man who’s willing to throw his own lover to the crocodiles? Rheon does a lot of heavy lifting to overcome his association with Ramsay Bolton (his best-known role), and for the most part he succeeds. I don’t think I ever came to like Tenax, but at the very least I wanted him to succeed.
Both Saran Martins and Moe Hashim also deliver some remarkable and compelling performances. From the moment we meet her it’s clear that Cala is the type of fierce heroine that we so rarely see in peplum fodder like this one. There’s a steely grace to her performance and her line readings, and her story is one of those that has true stakes. She wants to save her children, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to do just that, up to and including forming and breaking alliances with the equally merciless Tenax. Kwame, likewise, is a compelling lead, and his plotline falls neatly in line with those that we’ve seen in many other similar films. Hashim brings a remarkable intensity to his performance, as he tries to hold onto his humanity even in the midst of all the monstrous cruelty of the arena. He might emerge with his freedom in the end, but it comes at a tremendous price.
The other key conflict is between the idealistic young horse breeder Elia, who endures tremendous heartbreak thanks to his brothers’ decisions to stay in Rome and become part of Tenax’s Gold Faction. This decision, founded in optimism and a desire for a better life, ends up sowing the seeds for disaster and tragedy, as Elia ends up being the only brother to survive, the other two perishing in the arena. Gonçalo Almeida imbues the character with a wide-eyed innocence that’s quite charming, and it’s particularly heartbreaking to watch this get crushed out of him by the brutal and cynical nature of life in Rome.
And then there’s Domitian. I won’t go on too much about him, but suffice it to say that he’s one of the best villains I’ve seen in an antiquity-set drama since…well, probably since ever. He’s here, he’s queer, and he’s going to fuck shit up, including his own brother. There’s a burning intensity to Macari’s performance that I just couldn’t turn away from, even as I was also disgusted by his actions and his cruelty; not even his own slave boy lover is spared from his ruthless desire to prove his own worth and to assert his power. And yet, as I wrote earlier this week, this is precisely what makes him so great as a queer character.
All of this isn’t to say that Those About to Die is in any way a perfect or even a particularly good show, at least not in the way that we’ve come to expect of premium cable dramas (such as Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon). The CGI, I have to say, was sometimes cringingly bad, akin to what you might see in a network drama of ten years ago. I kept being reminded of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, which was an ambitious ABC production that was repeatedly hampered and undercut by the shoddiness of its effect. Some of the actors aren’t quite up to the task of capturing the full complexity of their characters, with Tom Hughes being particularly wooden and stiff, particularly in comparison to Macari’s much more energetic performance and Hopkins’ stately declamations.
What it is, however, is pure melodramatic peplum. Let me be clear: I don’t mean that as an insult. Indeed, there’s a lot of pleasure to be had in embracing this particular aesthetic. There were times when I almost thought I was watching a Dickens novel translated into an ancient Roman saga, both because there were so many competing and intersecting storylines and because the series really does give us a fascinating glimpse into what life might have been like during the reign of the Flavians. It’s full of blood and tragedy and violence but also joy and love and triumph. Like I said, melodramatic peplum.
I do wish that it would have spaced out these stories, perhaps over the course of a couple of seasons, rather than cramming them all into one. There are quite a few character deaths–including Scorpus, a main character!--that don’t land nearly as effectively as they might because the series just moves too fast to its destination. After all, even the best-written series can only do so much to draw us into a character’s life when there are so many storylines bouncing around and there are only ten total episodes. If there’s a second season, I do hope that the show’s creative team gives their stories a bit more room to breathe (which shouldn’t be too hard, considering how many characters end up dying before the season is out).
While Those About to Die isn’t as serious as HBO’s Rome or as hedonistic as Starz’s Spartacus (though it clearly draws from both), it does ultimately manage to succeed on its own terms. It gives us characters that we grow to love and to care about, even as we acknowledge their flaws and their shortcomings. I know that I, for one, was on the edge of my seat during some of the sequences, wondering whether my beloved characters–particularly Kwame–were going to be able to escape alive from a series that was quite willing to kill off even its major figures.
The burning question I have now is whether we’ll get a second season. I can’t imagine that this was a cheap production (for all the clunkiness of some of its CGI) and, given the belt-tightening that’s been sweeping across Hollywood, I can easily see Peacock pulling the plug and sparing themselves any further expense. Still, the show has done decently well with critics–hovering around 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is far better than I thought it would attain–and the commentary on Facebook has also been surprisingly positive. All of this isn’t to say that the powers-that-be will give it another chance. This is the steamer, after all, that canceled the Girls5Eva, so their taste in what constitutes worthwhile entertainment is definitely questionable.
If, however, we are fortunate enough to get a second season of this show, there will be more than enough territory to cover. Kwame and Domitian have unresolved business to attend to, and Tenax will no doubt continue to make the most out of his newfound power and position. And we know that Cala is not going to go back to Numidia any time soon. She has her children to look after, and she’s not going to let anything happen to them.
I know one thing for sure. I’ll be seated for a potential second season.