[uberdru]

But I think the HBO series Rome captured exactly this, or at least as much as it could in brief span. The life and struggles of freemen and slaves, not just the emperor. One of the greatest TV series ever, and cut off in its prime after only 2 seasons. Full set of Rome built on Cinecittà studios!

[the_biot]

They had an outline of the story for several more seasons, and the showrunner has described how it would have gone. I am very, very grateful they decided to stop when they did -- they were about to ruin the show.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

The first season was awesome, but IMO second season was already pretty bad.

[xoxxala]

Little Wars TV did a deep dive into the production of Rome and where the five season arc would have gone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cIVJD1cmbk

[phantasmish]

Unless they moved some things forward because they knew it was ending ending, I agree. As much as part of me wants to see where some of that goes, I know it wouldn’t have been good. Not like the rest of it was.

Separate topic: The way the show handled Antony’s speech at Caesar’s funeral got one of the biggest laughs out of me of any TV show ever.

[uberdru]

You really didn't want to see Titus Pullo fighting the Picts??

[languagehacker]

Possibly the best thing John Milius has done -- I said what I said!

[mjklin]

Indeed. I wish I had been able to see this when I was taking high school Latin in the 90s, at least the school-friendly version (if it exists)