Those About To Die

That’s a lot of characters to keep track of, and while things bounce around like a “Ben-Hur” chariot, the series keeps you mightily entertained — even in its most ridiculous moments.

Emmerich and Rodat rarely linger long enough on the story’s weaker parts to test our patience, and there’s just enough that works to keep us binging. Like a gladiator in the pit, the show earns a thumbs up to fight another day.

Delivers intrigue, deception, and coliseum carnage with an enthusiasm that’s offset by its derivativeness.

Those About to Die leans on big outrages because it’s not so good at small conflicts.

Subtle it isn’t. But for anyone counting down the days until the belated sequel to Ridley Scott’s epic hits our screens, this lavish alternate history lesson is a solid stopgap.

If "Those About to Die" sometimes feels like a neutered, TV version of that project ["Gladiator 2"] – despite a budget reportedly north of $140 million – it's still entertaining enough for fans of violent period pieces to serve as a hearty appetizer to that likely full meal.

Ultimately, Those About to Die is not really for those people whose Roman Empire is the Roman Empire. It is for people who want the ancient world, where the stakes of sex and violence were far lower than the present day, to give licence to something primal, something carnal, in them. Emmerich doesn’t do subtle, and so Those About to Die is suitably, viscerally, bold.

The gladiator combat and chariot races (plus Thrones veteran Iwan Rheon) are great, but they're just one fraction of an overstuffed series that tries too hard to cover every aspect of life in Rome during the early days of The Colosseum.

Those About to Die is 10 hours of unashamed guilty-pleasure hokum. [5 - 25 Aug 2024, p.4]

This isn’t the high road to Rome, though neither is it the lowest. There is some history mashed up in here and an evident attempt to fill the screen and story with accurate period details, though the digital effects and backgrounds tend to take one out of the human reality and into a video game.

It's not the worst show to watch about chariot racers, gladiators, emperors, and the vicious Roman Empire, but one that's certainly inferior to the multiple classics the genre had to offer in the last few decades.

There is entertainment, but its presence is fleeting and often arrives unintentionally in the form of catastrophically poor dialogue or racing scenes full of just enough excitement to distract from the supremely average CG littered throughout.

With CGI that looks like it’s been made for a Windows XP screensaver, accents that vary from Welsh to English, Italian and French, and cliched lines (“friends close, enemies closer”!) that even have the Oscar-winning Hopkins fighting for his life, and Those About to Die quickly becomes a confusing mess.

All the elements are here for a pricy, enjoyable, campy soap opera. Instead it takes itself too seriously, to increasingly dull effect.

Those About to Die was largely directed by Roland Emmerich, and although it has some of the Moonfall and 2012 director’s trademark lunacy, there’s ultimately not nearly enough of that to provide consistent entertainment. As drama, it’s generally bad, but it’s sometimes fun-bad, which I say as somebody who really likes Emmerich in “fun-bad” mode.

Subtle? Never. Absurd? Always. Fun? Not quite enough.

Truly, the show tries to be as Thrones-ian as possible and fails in all the important ways at every turn. Those About to Die attempts to weave a complex political tale with characters coming from all walks of life—and immediately trips over all of the threads used to make it.

Hopkins is sadly underused, leaving viewers to instead spend tedious time with Vespasian’s two sons. .... Those About to Die may have cost a pretty penny to make, but all we’re left with is cheap thrills.

“Those About to Die” isn’t a worthy successor to anything. It does just enough to pass as an expensive-looking knock-off (my god, wait ’til you see the opening credits) that Peacock can advertise in between Olympic relay races, but there’s no purpose under its shiny armor beyond another misconceived ploy for someone else’s power.

Those About To Die is too muddled, with too many characters, to even enjoy for the sex and violence, of which there’s quite a bit.

It’s a solid premise for a mega-budget sports drama (the 10-episode first season reportedly cost $150 million). But the execution is at once ghoulishly violent, cartoonishly soapy, and too formulaic to transcend the macho fantasies of its makers.