‘Those About to Die’ Review: Peacock’s Gladiatorial Spectacle 5

In most promos for Peacock‘s new 10-part drama Those About to Die, Anthony Hopkins gazes out like a gnarled marble bust brought partially to life. Even the commercials that acknowledge that the series is perhaps a bit more of an ensemble piece feature the multiple Oscar winner in a badly photoshopped human pyramid, the recognizable pinnacle atop a promotional Eye of Providence.

It is more a service than a spoiler to decry this blatant bait-and-switch. While there may or may not be other reasons to watch Those About to Die, I can clarify: For a small number of episodes, Hopkins is perhaps the 10th or 12th most important part of the ensemble and for the rest of the series he doesn’t even rise to that level.

There is surely a story of some sort that explains or justifies how Hopkins came to be involved in the first place. The answer may relate to a friend or loved one in the cast or crew, the irresistible opportunity to spend between seven and 10 days acting in a toga or, well, money. I’d believe any of those. One motive I definitely wouldn’t believe? That Hopkins was lured by the script or the character he was offered.

As for the rest? Those About to Die arrives amid an increasingly chaotic number of gladiatorially-themed entertainments. The Peacock premiere comes within 10 days of the release of a full trailer for Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Oscar-winning Gladiator and concurrently with casting on Spartacus: House of Ashur, an extension of the gore-and-nudity-filled Starz franchise.

This expensive, but frequently cheap-looking, placeholder is historical, but larded up with clunky fiction. Its content is adults-only, but its heavy reliance on violence and nudity plays as trashy and exploitative, lacking the visceral punch of Scott’s film or the operatic delirium of the Starz series.

Those About to Die was largely directed by Roland Emmerich, and although it has some of the Moonfall and 2012 director’s trademark lunacy, there’s ultimately not nearly enough of that to provide consistent entertainment. As drama, it’s generally bad, but it’s sometimes fun-bad, which I say as somebody who really likes Emmerich in “fun-bad” mode.

Adapted, for no particular textual reason, from the same Daniel P. Mannix book that was somewhat the basis for Gladiator, Those About to Die begins in Rome circa AD 79. Vespasian (Hopkins), emperor of 10 years, is beginning to contemplate succession. He has two sons — Titus (Tom Hughes), a famed general, and Domitian (Jojo Macari), a political animal and direct spiritual heir to every scheming, creepily perverse Roman striver in the Claudius/Caligula/Commodus vein.

When he isn’t pondering his replacement, Vespasian is thinking of his legacy, with a particular interest in preventing a peasant revolt, complete with a snide introductory voiceover repeating Juvenal’s line (from decades later) about ordinary Romans craving merely bread and circuses. The civilians aren’t getting their grain, in part because of imports caught in the middle of the Titus/Domitian power struggle, but geez oh man there are a lot of circuses.

Our point-of-entry into the world of competitive bloodsport is Tenax (Iwan Rheon, better than the inconsistent writing), a former guttersnipe who has risen to control a wildly successful gambling concern tied to the chariot races in the Circus Maximus. Tenax has even bigger dreams, though.

Traditionally, four different factions/colors have competed in chariot races, each owned and manipulated by a patrician family. But Tenax thinks he can leverage his money, his connections to Domitian and his friendship with superstar charioteer Scorpus (Dimitri Leonidas, actually hilarious in an intentional way) to launch the first new racing faction in hundreds of years.

Tied to Scorpus, we meet a trio of Spanish horse trainers — Eneko Sagardoy, Pepe Barroso, Gonçalo Almeida — so comically underwritten that my notes just call them “Pretty Boring,” “Pretty Bearded” and “Likes Prostitutes,” since they barely have names and definitely don’t have individual voices or characters.

It goes on, though! Chariot racing isn’t the only sport happening at venues including Vespasian’s pet architectural project, the Flavian Amphitheater, which is approaching its grand opening. There are also the gladiators themselves, led by Kwame (Moe Hashim), a young African who catches a giant CG lion in one scene and is abducted to Rome along with sisters Aura (Kyshan Wilson) and Jula (Alicia Edogamhe, appealing but underwritten) in the next.

Kwame is trained in the art of gladiatorial combat with the help of Viggo (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), a generally sympathetic Northman, while Jula and Aura await help from their avenging mother Cala (Sara Martins, offering occasional highlights), who arrives in town and makes an uncomfortable alliance with Tenax.

On a very superficial level, it’s possible to look at the way Those About to Die connects athletic and gambling concerns to the world of 21st century sports, complete with a widening wealth gap between those controlling the action and those spending their dwindling resources in the hopes of entertainment. I don’t think the series has meaningful parallels to draw between our current moment and the excesses of first century Rome, but they’re there in surface terms.

History has gifted Robert Rodat‘s adaptation with some colorful details and a few interesting dynamics to play with. Although Domitian’s actual ideological characteristics are flattened into a reptilian trope and Titus resembles How I Met Your Mother star Josh Radnor in a legionnaire’s uniform, Macari and Hughes give my two favorite performances in the series (Hopkins, it might as well be said, isn’t awful, just pointless). The brothers are both schemers and Rodat finds enough complexities in their motivations to make those mind games entertaining.

But who will be watching Those About to Die or any Roland Emmerich production for the mind games? You watch because you know that at some point an amphitheater will be filled with water and giant CG alligators (or maybe crocodiles?) will devour one-dimensional Romans, and in that respect, the show delivers.

Almost all of the series’ ample spectacle is computer generated, but once you accept that nothing sparks the gut-level joy of an ambitious stunt sequence or bit of practical gore, there’s amusement to be found in pouncing CG lions, flipping CG chariots and countless CG drone shots of CG Roman stadiums filled with CG Romans cheering for CG horses to race around a CG track. (Let me quickly acknowledge the possibility that there may be traces of actual stunt work here. But watched on my very nice TV under optimal circumstances, nothing at all looks real, though the CG lions and elephants and whatnot are absolutely cool.)

“The artifice is what makes it entertaining. And profitable,” Domitian says at one point, a line of dialogue that made me cheer louder than any character’s victory in the arena, because if there are people in Those About to Die you’re supposed to be rooting for, I missed them.

Plus, every time you stray outside the parts of the drama that are intended to be ludicrous, you end up in the parts that are unintentionally ludicrous, which is to say any time the writers are making things up rather than working from a vague factual template.

In lieu of actual human relationships, the series has at least three “love at first sight” romances in which nobody bothered to give either side of a pairing names. But we’re just supposed to accept that whenever pretty people are proximate their canoodling is inevitable. In the absence of nuanced human stakes, there are multiple instances in which child characters are introduced exclusively to be put in jeopardy and/or killed. When that fails, the show leans into endangered animals, which are mostly CG, so you needn’t worry.

The bits of fictional contrivance are rarely good — like the four-episode arc that attempts to make Tenax sympathetic by letting him be menaced by a hideously scarred cartoonish adversary — and the bits of fictionalized history are often worse.

Titus’ consort Berenice (Lara Wolf), a Judean who in life was quite fascinating, is badly underserved and ultimately mistreated by the story, and the paper-thin depiction of the actual Judean slaves in Rome at the time comes precariously close to antisemitic in moments. Less egregious, but more head-scratching, I’m still trying to figure out why the series embellishes the impact of the Mt. Vesuvius eruption on Rome.

But who will be watching Those About to Die for its veracity? Disappointed people, that’s who! You’ll be watching for the lion-mauling and limb-chopping and those things are, if nothing else, provided. You may be watching for Anthony Hopkins, but hopefully I’ve prevented that poor decision, if nothing else.