The best Roman drama ever made isn’t Gladiator — and it got cancelled for being too expensive

Every few months someone asks me for a Roman epic recommendation, and my answer’s always the same. Skip the movies. Watch Rome — not the city, the HBO series, two seasons between 2005 and 2007 before it got canceled right as it was hitting its stride. It’s streaming on HBO Max now, and nothing else on television has come as close to making ancient Rome feel like somewhere people actually lived and argued and died, instead of a marble backdrop for a sword fight. If it were a motion picture, it would have made our list of sword and sandal epics.