My Take Radio

On Jan­u­ary 22nd, Starz debuted their newest series Spar­ta­cus: Blood & Sand. S:BS fol­lows the adven­tures and mis­for­tunes of an unnamed Thra­cian war­rior who vol­un­teered to assist Rome in bat­tle only to be betrayed by the Romans. When the unnamed Thra­cian saw what the Romans were plan­ning, he defied orders and raced back to his vil­lage to save his wife. Their reunion was short lived though as the Roman caught up to the Thra­cian and took his wife as well. His sen­tence for Legate Claudius Glaber was death in the arena. Sadly, Glaber did not get to see our hero die. After a brief and moti­vat­ing vision, the Thra­cian pro­ceeded to kill all the glad­i­a­tors. This fero­cious dis­play surely meant death until  Batia­tus, owner of the glad­i­a­tor Ludus, decided to inter­vene and pur­chased the Thra­cian in hopes of revers­ing his for­tunes. Batia­tus took the lib­erty of nam­ing our hero Spar­ta­cus due to his fierce­ness in bat­tle. Spar­ta­cus was the name of a leg­endary Thra­cian king.

At first glance, you will see a large num­ber of sim­i­lar­i­ties with the 300 film. From the CGI blood to the vicious com­bat, the inspi­ra­tion from this film helped shape Spar­ta­cus into what we are cur­rently see­ing. I also noticed a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties with the hit HBO series Rome.The first few episodes were a tour-de-force of vio­lence, sex and bloodshed, and many may deem these depic­tions as exces­sive. Per­son­ally, I feel that they accu­rately rep­re­sent a time of bar­barism and there­fore should be depicted as such. The over­all story, while con­sid­ered thin by many, has poten­tial to lead to some­thing greater. In addi­tion, they are cre­at­ing inter­twin­ing sto­ries between the other char­ac­ters as well as the glad­i­a­tors.  Thus far responses for the show have been mixed, yet Starz has already ordered a sec­ond season.

 I per­son­ally have enjoyed the series thus far. How­ev­erm there are some cringe-worthy moments which made me wince a bit due to the graphic nature of the scenes. But, much like the glad­i­a­tor sport, I was entertained.

I rec­om­mend you check out one or two episodes and make your own judg­ment. You can watch new episodes Fri­days & Sun­days on Starz or Starz OnDe­mand. If you have Net­flix stream­ing at home or on XBL, you can also find all the episodes there.

What do you think of this series?

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