This series started out pretty decently, with generous lashings of sex & nudity & some of the most imaginative CG killing & maiming you'll ever witness, but it also had a lot of vividly well-rounded characters! Sadly, after the first season the lead actor, Andy Whitfield, suddenly died & had to be replaced by Liam McIntyre, an actor not quite as intense, tho not for want of trying. (The continual strain of trying to live up to Whitfield's charisma probably contributed to McIntyre's slightly wooden Spartacus. He did what he could, but stepping into a lead role already popularized by someone else has got to be a hard row to hoe no matter what & Whitfield was a hard act to follow.) To make matters worse, Batiatus (the brilliant John Hannah), the almost likable rogue who owns the lutus, gets killed off at the end of the first season. As do Batiatus' rival lanista Solonius (excellently played by Craig Walsh-Wrightson) & Spartacus' bumbling friend Varro (Jai Courtney). But what the hey, we still have plenty of great characters left.
By end of the second season tho, the remaining characters portrayed with any real depth — the conniving Assyrian Ashur (Nick E Tarabay), Batiatus' scheming wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), her snooty airhead frenemy Ilythia (Viva Bianca) & even the indomitably dignified Oenameaus (Peter Mensah) all get whacked too.
Tho the script tries to compensate with lots of bombast, the surviving characters become increasingly shallow & the third season rapidly degenerates into a lot of verbal & physical wrangling interspersed with wooden love scenes & otherwise unrelenting slash & bash action. No matter how brilliantly choreographed, after two seasons, all this fighting stuff gets pretty tedious. Two new characters do manage to somewhat enliven the third season tho: Attius (Cohen Holloway), the venal but plainspoken Roman blacksmith who casts his lot with the rebels but — unfortunately — lasts only two episodes & Laeta (Anna Hutchison), the public-spirited young Roman matron who ends up a slave herself. Nevertheless, by the end of the final ep, I was impatient for the mortally wounded Spartacus to just hurry up & finish dying so the series could finally be over.
By end of the second season tho, the remaining characters portrayed with any real depth — the conniving Assyrian Ashur (Nick E Tarabay), Batiatus' scheming wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), her snooty airhead frenemy Ilythia (Viva Bianca) & even the indomitably dignified Oenameaus (Peter Mensah) all get whacked too.
Tho the script tries to compensate with lots of bombast, the surviving characters become increasingly shallow & the third season rapidly degenerates into a lot of verbal & physical wrangling interspersed with wooden love scenes & otherwise unrelenting slash & bash action. No matter how brilliantly choreographed, after two seasons, all this fighting stuff gets pretty tedious. Two new characters do manage to somewhat enliven the third season tho: Attius (Cohen Holloway), the venal but plainspoken Roman blacksmith who casts his lot with the rebels but — unfortunately — lasts only two episodes & Laeta (Anna Hutchison), the public-spirited young Roman matron who ends up a slave herself. Nevertheless, by the end of the final ep, I was impatient for the mortally wounded Spartacus to just hurry up & finish dying so the series could finally be over.