Spartacus: Blood and Sand finished off their first season a couple nights ago and while I had early reservations, mostly related to the gratuitousness of the nudity and violence, the season came together in a really satisfying way. The violence is still ridiculous at times, the nudity and sexuality is often overdone, but the characters survive through those faults. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the show is strongly written, seeing as its creator is Steven S. DeKnight, a veteran of a number of quality television shows. Even more than that, the show was blessed with having Daniel Knauf, creator of one of the best television shows ever made, as a consulting producer.

But I think it’s safe to say that Spartacus snuck up on people with its quality; it’s left me interested in the second season, and pondering where the characters will go before their preordained end. On a related note, it seems as though the show’s name has been retconned as Spartacus, with a season subtitle of Blood and Sand, to allow for the second season to shift out of the gladiatorial ring with the new subtitle Vengeance. So I look forward to Spartacus: Vengeance, though I do hope the show is more willing to forgo the over-the-top violence and sexuality¹ now that it’s found strong characters to base the show around.

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Footnotes

1. The more recent episodes have come with a disclaimer telling viewers the violence and sexuality is there to portray a realistic representation of Ancient Rome, but HBO’s Rome didn’t whitewash the dingier parts of Ancient Rome without having such profuse and omnipresent nudity and violence, so some of it is clearly there for the sake of grabbing attention, and it’s that aspect of the show that I think could go away fairly easily. [↩]