Spartacus: Blood And Sand, the highly anticipated debut of the new series on Starz, debuts Friday, January 22nd at 10:00 PM. The show immediately earns its subtitle and throughout the entire fifty-five minutes there are constant reminders of its unflinching and uncompromising depiction of events. There is ample, graphic bloodshed and enough nudity and near-realistic sex to make HBO blush. But combine the graphic content along with the superb acting, legendary story and comic book-ish stylization and you have a pretty terrific first episode. Everyone knows the legend of Spartacus; if you aren’t directly familiar with it, trust me, you’ve seen it retold many, many times. It’s the classic tale of boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy loses girl to Roman slavery, boy becomes slave himself and forced to fight in gladiatorial games, boy becomes kick-ass gladiator, boy leads slavery uprising. Obviously that isn’t all covered in the first episode as a one episode series is usually called a TV movie. As a second season has already been ordered, it can safely be said that the road to uprising will be at least a couple of years long.
If you’ve seen the films 300 of Sin City then you’ll have an idea of the style and look of this show. Not that you need to be a fan of either of those to like Spartacus. The acting is top-notch, what with the likes of John Hannah, Lucy Lawless and Craig Parker playing characters they don’t normally play with great aplomb. I confess that I had not previously seen Andy Whitfield in anything before, but his Spartacus goes from compassionate and loving to fierce and merciless with an ease that not many can pull off. Whitfield will be worth watching both here and in anything else he does. Equally flawless in its execution is the driving score by Joseph LoDuca. Not surprisingly, LoDuca does an amazing job with the music for Leverage and Legend of the Seeker, yet both those shows and this one have distinctive scores.
If you are looking for a show that gives you an unflinching look at gladitorial combat with a fair dose of human emotion and drama, then Spartacus is something you should not miss. I greatly enjoyed the premiere and I’m in for the long haul. Check it out Fridays at 10:00 PM on Starz.