‘Rome’ on HBO is a Dirty, Decadent Delight — and Your Next Quarantine Binge

Let it be known that I love HBO’s Rome. I love it to the extent that I named my cat after Kevin McKidd’s brooding Centurion Lucius Vorenus and I used face time with Outlander star Tobias Menzies to ask him about reuniting with Rome co-star Ciaran Hinds in AMC’s The Terror. I love Rome so much that it’s become my go-to binge-watch in quarantine, even though I’ve already binged through it at least four times.

However, it’s upon this most recent watch that I’ve realized that Rome is HBO’s most underrated series of all time. Weaving together plot-lines that feature violent assassinations, brutal gladiatorial contests, illicit love affairs, and the fall of the Roman Republic, Rome is a dirty, decadent delight — and it’s the one HBO show you should be binging right now.

Rome premiered on HBO all the way back in 2005. The series opens on the tumultuous time right when the First Triumvirate — a tense, but profitable three-way alliance between Crassus, the richest man in Rome, Pompey (Kenneth Cranham), the most celebrated military mind, and Julius Caesar (Ciaran Hinds), a prodigious politician and popular man of the people — falls apart. Just as Julius Caesar is on the verge of conquering Gaul for good, Pompey loses his wife in childbirth. That’s important because Pompey not only loved his wife dearly, but she was Caesar’s daughter, and therefore represented the only personal bond between the two ambitious men. What happened next is a complicated series of controversial conspiracies and outright acts of aggression. The city of Rome would be gripped in fear for the next few years as Caesar and Pompey fought for supreme power.

Now, this period of Roman history was already full of fascinating characters, from the voraciously vulgar Mark Antony (James Purefoy) to the clever Cicero (David Bamber), but Rome reframes the story by focusing on two of Julius Caesar’s most talented soldiers. Kevin McKidd plays the straight-laced, honor-bound, and stubbornly conservative Lucius Vorenus and Ray Stevenson is Titus Pullo, a giant bulldog of a man who bounds through life thinking only of glory, money, sex, and pleasure. Vorenus and Pullo’s odd couple friendship is the glue that holds Rome together, and it’s suggested more than once that their bond had the serendipity to tear the Roman Republic apart.

Rome has the difficult challenge of bringing legendary historic figures to life in a TV drama, and it does so with absolute joy. The attention to detail is staggering to this history nerd. Everything from the colorful graffiti in the opening credits to the fringe on Caesar’s tunics is true to the historic record, and yet Rome uses these details with total joyous abandon. While other historic dramas make accuracy feel like a chore, Rome luxuriates in the odd factoids and strange realities of the day.

Really, it cannot be stressed enough how fun Rome is to watch. This is a totally ruthless show, full of grisly displays of violence and some of the most kinky sex scenes on HBO. The plot moves at a chaotic clip, and the stakes for character relationships do entire flips in the space of one act of a single episode. Rome is anchored by incredible performances and the shadow of what was to come on HBO as this show is very much the dress rehearsal for early seasons of Game of Thrones.

Cutthroat politics, scandalous romances, and good old fashioned plot twists: Rome has it all and it is the best HBO show for you to discover (or rediscover) in 2020.

Where to stream Rome