Posted on 08/21/2005 12:09:19 PM PDT by wagglebee
The BBC is about to broadcast the most violent and sexually explicit programme ever to be shown on British television - and at £58 million for 12 episodes it is also the most expensive.
Rome, a drama set in the dying days of the Roman Empire, contains full frontal male and female nudity and depictions of violent sex.
The Sunday Telegraph has seen the first six episodes of the blood-soaked drama - a co-production between the corporation and the American broadcaster HBO - which contains nudity within its opening minutes.
The show, which premieres in America next Sunday and hits BBC2 screens in the autumn, is far more explicit than I Claudius, the broadcaster's adaptation of the Robert Graves novel, which caused a sensation when it was released in 1976.
The new series opens in 52BC, 400 years after the founding of the Roman Republic, when, according to the producer, Rome's foundations are "crumbling because of corruption" and "excess".
The city's bloody story of rivalry and intrigue is told through the eyes of two soldiers - Lucius Vorenus, played by Kevin McKidd, and Titus Pullo, played by Ray Stevenson, who become unexpected friends when they return from occupied Gaul with Julius Caesar.
Some of Britain's finest actors, including Lindsay Duncan, who plays Servilia, Polly Walker, as Atia, James Purefoy as Marc Antony, Ciaran Hinds as Julius Caesar and David Bamber as Cicero have starring roles.
Much of the sexual intrigue surrounds the scheming of Walker's character.
Within nine minutes of the first episode opening she is shown topless astride one of her lovers with slaves in attendance.
Seconds later she is shown addressing her son Octavian while fully nude. The relationship between mother and son is particularly fraught.
Atia continually lambasts her son, who is 11 when we first see him, for being too effeminate. She orders him to eats goats' testicles. "Eat them while they are warm, they will put oak in your penis," she tells him. In another scene, she taunts him about his virginity and asks: "Have you penetrated anyone yet?"
She later orders him to be taken to his brothel where he is given his choice of male and female lovers.
Brothels would appear to be a favourite location for the programme. In episode two, there are shots of couples copulating in one of Rome's most notorious dens of vice.
Some of the language would appear to be as colourful as the scenes. One character vows to "piss on Caesar" while others talk about "kissing arse".
Violence is also endemic in the drama, which shows slaves and prisoners being branded, crucified and tortured while hanging upside down from a ceiling.
A naked Marc Antony orders two topless women to fight each other with swords. When one is injured he comes to a rescue by licking blood off her chest. Earlier, a Hindu merchant has his arm broken while he is being pinned to the floor by a Roman boot.
The American version of the show will go out at 9pm a week today but a spokesman for the BBC said no decision had been made on a final time slot in Britain.
Historians last night were divided by the explicit nature of the scenes.
Bob Cowan, an expert on Latin literature at Brasenose College Oxford, said that although sexual excess was a feature of public life at the time, he was adamant that the depictions of wild abandon were overplayed.
"We have to be sceptical about the emphasis on sexual abandon. Roman writers at the time were keen to over-exaggerate what went on because it suited their own purposes to portray Rome as a society in decline. It was also common for political rivals to try and portray each other as the worst kind of sexual deviant."
His fellow historian Jeremy Catto said that subsequent generations would often demonise the Romans for their own political purposes. "In fact, Rome was a pretty po-faced, patriarchal society which favoured women of modest virtue," said Mr Catto.
"The idea of it being a society racked by debauchery has a lot to do with myth.
"But as Sam Goldwyn once said, 'Why let the facts get in the way of a good film?' "
Christopher Biggins, who played the depraved Emperor Nero in I Claudius, said that while dramatists could never go too far over the top in their depictions of ancient Rome, any drama that was too explicit might date rather quickly.
"Ancient Rome was debauched beyond measure. It was the end of the world as far as they were concerned and they did everything they wanted to. I Claudius was extremely explicit in terms of story but it was all done by inference. In one scene, I actually bed my own mother but you did not see any scenes of nudity. It would not have been acceptable in the time.
"It is hard to think of now but even the scene we did was considered unacceptable for American television and was actually cut.
"I think the reliance on inference is one reason why the 1970s production has stood the test of time."
Newsweek recently said of Rome: "Think I Claudius on steroids and Viagra."
The BBC, however, last night defended the content. "We want people to understand what ancient Rome was really like and we are trying to give them an authentic feel of life back then.
"What you have to remember was that the real Rome was 10 times worse than anything we are showing on screen."
The BBC said it was compressing the first three episodes of the American drama into two instalments. It said none of the sexual content would be removed; rather, the corporation thought there was too much historical explanation for a European audience already aware of the Roman world.
Rome, which has drawn on the talents of some of the world's most acclaimed writers and directors including Michael Apted, the director of Gorillas In the Mist and The World Is Not Enough, has spared no expense in its depiction of the ancient world. Series one, which will run for 12 episodes, has cost £58 million to produce. This compares with the hit show Lost, which cost £33 million for it's most recent series.
The show's producers reconstructed scenes from the ancient world in Rome's Cinecitta studios. They also went to extraordinary lengths to ensure buildings, costumes and locations were historically accurate.
Teams of experts were sent to the ruins at Pompeii to copy the decor in that city's brothels and even to replicate the vandalism on its walls.
And yet there was no Roman Empire before 30BC
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1476409/posts
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