I agree Curzon’s appraisal of “The Tudors”. Until some episode at the end of the second season-perhaps when Octavian was f#*cking his wife, “Rome” had not deviated too far from some non-Hollywood interpretation of history. But then, particularly when Pullo escorts his “son”, Caesarian, away, “Rome” just goes all wrong. But then, “The Tudors” really doesn’t have to compete with Shakespeare, ancient eyewitnesses and historians, and Hollywood. “Rome” had to give itself a reason to exist.

However, au contraire, “Rome” did some interesting things. Although the storyline sacrificed accuracy, it did try to recreate the bowels of the ancient world and the lower orders. I do think that caused the writers to put too much postmodern spin on the textbook facts in the elite world, it gives “Rome” a visceral brutality “The Tudors” glosses over with its sexiness. There were times I just wanted to vomit-including the sex scenes-when I watched “Rome”. “The Tudors” makes disease, miscarriage, and torture spectacular.

“I, Claudius” is not on the ballot!

But if write-ins are permitted, I agree with Bjorn and vote for “I, Claudius” as well.

No, I Claudius is not on the ballot! That show was indeed amazing, but back in the day the production was poor and the producers had to make up for it with real Shakespearean actors and solid dialogue. All that made it a great show, but the same could not be done today because so much money and resources are available for production, and dialogue is sacrificed as a result.

Minhea: why?

Rome, or any series with that Livia character…

I haven’t see The Tudors, so can’t really vote, but Rome was really cool, incredible production and excellent casting (take Cleopatra for example, very unorthodox beauty).

Rome by far.

But the Tudors do have some really hot women on the cast, so that holds my interest in spite of the script’s excessive melodrama.

Strong counterargument Roy, and well taken. Tudors does show snapshots of the dregs of society, but these are limited and not a major (or even the primary) part of the plot as in Rome.

I just watched episode 1 of The Tudors and I am astonished that you could find it the superior show. Granted this is based only on the pilot, but every single aspect of the first episode screams to be a solid “B”. The writing, acting, direction is all yeomanlike. Quite competent, rarely exceptional, and more annoyingly, also rarely awful. The script is peppered with bits of background history included in the dialogue in a clunky and unnatural way, which sound to me like spoken footnotes. The little pause/camera pan when introducing Anne Boleyn was truly a cliched bit of foreshadowing. Either the audience knows who she is and understands the significance, or they are going to be surprised-but broadcasting it like that just seemed cheesy to me.

Not to say the show was overall bad. I was entertained, but not in any way particularly impressed. Still, as a perfectly respectable dramatization of an important period of history it does seem interesting enough to continue watching, although the fact that the entire series was written by the same writer gives me little hope that it will elevate itself later on.

Unless I’m wrong, this is continuing the pattern of Showtime being a very second rate attempt at HBO’s model. Have they ever made any show that wasn’t either an inferior remake or a competent but uninspired attempt at an HBO style series?