Rome Season 2 End
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Granted, Rome was originally intended as a mere miniseries but spawned into a full series after the network saw the quality of the scripts.
Rome - Season 1 - Polly Walker as Atia, James Purefoy as Mark Antony |
Unfortunately for HBO and any other network, viewer numbers are everything, esp. when the cost for the entire first season is around 100 million U$. We cannot really blame HBO when the viewers rather prefer crap over intelligent, quality TV series. If more people would have watched shows like Rome, Deadwood, Firefly, Invasion they would not have been cancelled, easy as that. Networks need to make profit and have to provide what the majority wants to see and if the majority wants to see crap then they have to give them crap. Besides, what network are you looking for when you want to watch quality shows? HBO, right?
Rome ended on March 25th 2007.
About the TV series.
Half a century before the dawn of Christianity, Rome has become the wealthiest city in the world, a cosmopolitan metropolis of one million people — epicenter of a sprawling empire. Founded on principles of shared power and fierce personal competition, the Republic was created to prevent any one man from seizing absolute control. It is a society where soldiers can rise up from provincial commoners to become national heroes, even leaders of the Republic.
But as the ruling class became extravagantly wealthy, the foundations have crumbled, eaten away by corruption and excess, and the old values of Spartan discipline and social unity have given way to a great chasm between the classes.
A richly layered look at history and the building of an empire, ‘Rome’ sets the stage for modern politics — infighting, corruption, party lines and the struggle to define collective values. “Human nature never changes,” says co-creator Bruno Heller. “We see the same problems today — crime, unemployment, disease, and the struggle for social mobility and the pressure to preserve your place in a precarious society.”
An intimate drama of love and betrayal, masters and slaves, and husbands and wives, ‘Rome’ chronicles the epic times that saw the fall of a Republic and the creation of an empire.