Spartacus: Blood and Sand
Vertex | Starz | Release Date: January 22, 2010
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
10
Negative:
5

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin
Season 1 Review: The result is compulsively watchable pulp, provided you have a high threshold for decapitations and copulations, sometimes simultaneous. Read full review
60
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Season 1 Review: It's no "Rome," but at least it appears headed more in that direction. Read full review
60
Washington PostHank Stuever
Season 1 Review: It's deliciously, marvelously bad, and I was helpless in its grip. It's a long way from Kubrick, but what isn't? Read full review
58
NewsdayVerne Gay
Season 1 Review: After Spartacus blows most of its special-effects budget on the pilot, it settles into a not-bad sword-and-sandal genre series, a la "Xena" or "Hercules." Read full review
58
San Jose Mercury News/Contra Costa TimesChuck Barney
Season 1 Review: Some viewers will be riveted to the sex, violence, beautiful nude bods and sensory gluttony of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Others will be turned off almost instantly. Read full review
50
Kansas City StarAaron Barnhart
Season 1 Review: Though the violence is designed to be gorgeous, like a graphic novel, it doesn’t have the pacing of a comic book. The creators of Spartacus: Blood and Sand seem a little too enamored of their ability to sketch a vast Thracian tableau, a fight scene, or a coliseum full of cheering CGI Italians. Read full review
50
USA TodayRobert Bianco
Season 1 Review: There's no denying that Spartacus does what it sets out to do fairly well--and in a way that doesn't duplicate anything else now on TV. Were it broadcast free over the air where children might find it, one might blanch, but that's not the case. Read full review
50
Dallas Morning NewsCary Darlig
Season 1 Review: Toto, we're not in I, Claudius, or even Rome, anymore. The problem, though, is that this Spartacus is so over the top that it begs to be considered as total camp. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineMatt Roush
Season 1 Review: Spartacus is derivative as entertainment and primitively pandering as a diverting spectacle of campy historical fiction. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
Season 1 Review: The trappings up front are so over the top that to say you watch Spartacus to see a contemporary reworking of a cinema classic is like saying you go to Hooters for the food. Read full review
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