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There’s no doubt about it, the pilot episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand was not impressive - it was overly disgusting, awfully acted, irritatingly crass and worst of all, very poorly written. However, despite my initial repulsion, a decidedly odd sense of fascination compelled me to keep watching. Yet more odd was the fact that I honestly started to really enjoy it. With the end of the first season earlier this week, there’s no better time than now to recognise that there aren’t many shows that display improvement on this scale and that in short, the finale (and many of the episodes building up to it) provide one hell of a good hour of TV.
At first, Spartacus’s biggest problem was that it was terribly written. But once the writing improved, it became a whole lot easier to forgive all the other little issues. As soon as the plots for each episode were given more structure and clarity (which happened around episode five) the entire thing began to feel more watchable. From there on, I started to enjoy the profanity-laced Shakespearean language (“Jupiter’s cock!” is one of my new favourite obscenities) and the stylised atmosphere of this particular representation of ancient Rome. Spartacus was quickly becoming my guilty pleasure.
Admittedly, many of the aspects of the show that I dislike still haven’t actually changed. There’s still way too much unnecessary nudity and the fight scenes are more laughable than anything else (although I suppose credit must go to the choreographers for keeping the fighting entertaining). Also, there’s still tons of stylised blood spraying all over the place which most of the time just looks plain silly. The things that needed to change, though, did - the script got more clever, the acting more refined and the overall mood grew to be positively captivating.
From midseason Spartacus built some thunderous momentum towards its incredible finale (‘Kill Them All’). John Hannah and Lucy Lawless are the real highlights of this cast - together they're brilliant as the villainous scheming slave-owners Batiatus and Lucretia. It takes a few episodes, but Andy Whitfield develops to give a really compelling performance in the titular role too. Spartacus isn’t the only interesting slave here, and the supporting cast features delightful acting from Peter Mensah (Doctore), Manu Bennet (Crixus) and Nick E Tarabay (Ashur).
At around the tenth episode - the show provides some real payoff on the story-arcs from earlier on in the season. It was from there that I really started looked forward to seeing what was coming next in each episode and thankfully the plot progression played out wonderfully as it moved towards the inevitable and bloody end to its debut season.
Spartacus could definitely do with reducing the amount of sex and making the violence more believable but it really has come such a long way since that atrocious first episode. The writers have done a really great job in creating a brutal world of deceit and violence and I’m definitely going to be watching the next season (and the upcoming six-episode prequel!). It’s surprising considering how very negative I was at first, but it seems Spartacus: Blood and Sand has become my latest TV addiction.
Catch a repeat of the Spartacus: Blood and Sand finale ('Kill Them All') on Sunday night at 10pm on Bravo
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