Peacock's Those About To Die is D.O.A.

It’s a hell of a time for the Roman Empire. This fall, both Francis Ford Coppola’s sweeping sci-fi fable Megalopolis—loosely based on the Catiline conspiracy of 63 BC to overthrow the Roman Republic—and Ridley Scott’s much-anticipated Gladiator sequel with Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington will hit theaters. Before those big-screen studies into the ancient past, Peacock takes a stab at a sword-and-sandal epic with Those About To Die, a ten-episode peplum drama that premieres July 18.

The series has a fittingly epic pedigree both onscreen and off. Adapted from Daniel P. Mannix’s 1958 book of the same name, with scripts from Oscar-nominated Saving Private Ryan scribe Robert Rodat, Those About To Die comes from a man who knows his way around spectacle, Roland Emmerich, the master of disaster behind mega-budget popcorn flicks like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012.

His first official foray into television, Emmerich only co-directs half of the episode order—German director Marco Kreuzpaintner (Bodies, The Lazarus Project) takes on the other five—but his flashy influence is all over the program, which is far more taken with gladiatorial grandiosity than any genuine attempts at characterization or historical accuracy. (Warning: If the use of “No Church In The Wild” in that Gladiator II trailer made your blood boil, this might not be the show for you.) “I know what the mob wants to see. We need to entertain them, to excite them, to thrill them,” one character meta-declares in a late episode. “Remember, enough is good. More is better. Too much is perfect.”

And yet, Those About to Die is both too much and not enough. Set against the backdrop of the first-century Flavian dynasty, the toga drama knots together stories from all corners of the Roman Empire: Spanish horse breeders and Judean princesses, Numidian slaves, and world-famous charioteers. But none of these personalities particularly pop in this overly sepia-toned landscape. The players that come closest are Game Of Thrones veteran Iwan Rheon, portraying Tenax, an ambitious bettor’s bookmaker who is calculating and corrupt, no doubt, but far less cold-blooded than the actor’s most famous role, GOT’s Ramsay Bolton, and French actress Sara Martins as Cala, a tenacious North African trader who comes to the Eternal City to rescue her three children from slavery.

They are intriguing guides through the grifts and griefs of the Roman underworld, but viewers are routinely wrenched away from such characters to follow far less fascinating factions of the empire, including, surprisingly, the very rulers of the realm. That is to no fault of Sir Anthony Hopkins, who leads the ensemble as the formidable Emperor Vespasian. Having the built-in gravitas of one of the world’s greatest living actors certainly classes up the joint.

Still, Hopkins is sadly underused, leaving viewers to instead spend tedious time with Vespasian’s two sons, the stoic soldier and heir apparent Titus (a wooden Tom Hughes) and the perpetually plotting younger bro Domitian (Jojo Macari, who plays those moments of Machiavellian drive with wide-eyed, teeth-bared hamminess). The sibling rivalry is of the highest stakes, over the imperial seat itself, and yet the men can’t manage to muster up the snap of even the least biting Roy family feud.

Those About To Die pales in comparison to most of television’s ambitious dramas. Imagine Succession minus the deliciously cutting dialogue, Peaky Blinders without the Nick Cave-soundtracked swagger, or Thrones devoid of anyone to really root for—and specifically those historical epics that more heartily occupy the same time and place. Those Peacock marketers have tried to sell the series as an exploration of “a side of ancient Rome never before told—the dirty business of entertaining the masses, giving the mob what they want most…blood and sport.” But we’ve seen that side of ancient Rome—the gore-spattered arenas, the bread-and-circuses politics, the nudity-heavy hedonism—time and time again, on HBO’s Rome, Starz’s Spartacus, Netflix’s Barbarians, Sky Atlantic’s Domina, et cetera.

Rather than serve up a new take on the old civilization, Emmerich & Co. give you exactly the bloodlust and bombast you’ve come to expect from television’s Roman Empire, with a $150 million budget to boot. The production shot in Rome itself but you wouldn’t know it. The copious use of CGI—albino lions, giant crocodiles—and volume stages (shooting live-action actors and sets against large high-definition video walls) dull any of the immersive grandeur and brutality that could have been conjured up by the real-life capital. Those forever-softly-lit faux backdrops look particularly bogus during the show’s many chariot races, the digitized roaring crowds segmented by faction color like a big-budget Medieval Times. 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 premieres July 18 on Peacock