Those About to Die: Big Budget, Small Heart

Those About to Die is a big, expensive-looking TV series that wants to be a sprawling epic of Ancient Rome. It mostly succeeds at looking expensive, and mostly fails at being engaging. The premise is simple: set in 79 AD, the series follows a collection of Romans whose lives intersect around the construction of the Colosseum and the violent games held within it. The result is a show that feels like a costume drama with a budget too large for its ideas.

Trailer, via Peacock.

The Cast and Its Problem

Anthony Hopkins plays Emperor Vespasian, and he brings the weight of a lifetime of great roles to the part. Tom Hughes plays Titus Flavianus, Vespasian’s son and eventual successor, while Jojo Macari plays Domitian, the younger brother who schemes his way toward power. Iwan Rheon plays Tenax, a criminal who builds a team for the Circus Maximus races, and Gabriella Pession plays Antonia, one of the women caught up in the show’s central plot. Rupert Penry-Jones plays Marsus, Lara Wolf plays Berenice, Sara Martins plays Cala, Kyshan Wilson plays Aura, Alicia Ann Edogamhe plays Jula, Moe Hashim plays Kwame, and Dimitri Leonidas plays Scorpus.

The problem is that none of these characters are given enough room to breathe. The show tries to juggle a dozen threads at once, and most of them get lost in the shuffle. A woman named Cala comes to Rome to free her daughters from slavery and her son from a fate as a gladiator, which sounds like a strong thread. Instead it gets buried beneath the political scheming of the imperial family and the criminal ambitions of Tenax.

What Works

Roland Emmerich and Marco Kreuzpaintner direct, and the production design is genuinely impressive. The sets look like Ancient Rome, and the action sequences involving chariot racing and gladiatorial combat are staged with energy. The costumes are lavish, and the attention to detail in recreating the city’s grandeur is clearly present.

The show also benefits from a cast that includes Hopkins and Rheon, both of whom bring charisma to their parts even when the writing doesn’t give them much to work with.

What Doesn’t Work

The show’s biggest weakness is its pacing. With ten episodes stretched across a single season, each episode covers a staggering amount of ground. Character arcs start and finish in the same scene. Political alliances form and dissolve within minutes. The result is a show that feels rushed, with little time to develop any genuine emotional connection with its characters.

The show also leans heavily on spectacle over substance. The violence, the crowds, the grandeur of the Colosseum — all of it is rendered with skill, but none of it earns the viewer’s investment. Without a strong sense of who these people are, the scale of the production reads as excess rather than artistry.

Where It Lands

The show’s title is taken from the Latin greeting used by gladiators at the games: “Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant” — Hail Caesar, those about to die salute you. That phrase captures the fatalism at the heart of the series. But while the show understands the brutal nature of its setting, it never quite connects that brutality to the people caught within it.

Here’s what stands out across the season:

• Anthony Hopkins anchors the show as the aging emperor
• Iwan Rheon gives a memorable performance as the criminal Tenax
• The production design is consistently excellent
• The pacing is far too fast for the scope of the story

And here’s where the show stumbles:

1. The sheer number of characters makes it hard to keep track of who matters
2. Plot threads are introduced and resolved too quickly to feel meaningful
3. The show’s focus on spectacle often overwhelms the human element
4. The central character of Cala, trying to free her family, gets less screen time than she deserves

The show is ambitious, and it occasionally delivers on that ambition. But ambition is not the same as success. Those About to Die is a show that looks like a masterpiece and feels like a rough draft.

ancient Rome · Emperor Vespasian · gladiators · Those About to Die · TV Review