Recently in TV Category

THE LONG AWAITED (AND DREADED) season one finale of  Spartacus: Blood and Sand aired over the weekend on the Starz cable network.  That's the bad news.  The worse news is that season two of Spartacus is on indefinite hold because the title character -- Welsh born Austrailian actor Andy Whitfield -- has been diagnosed with a treatable form of cancer.

  To give you an idea of what this means, imagine Kirk Douglas being replaced as the star midway through the 1960 epic film Spartacus.  It couldn't be done then and it can't be done now.  Whitfield, who I had never seen before, owns the role of Spartacus, the Thracian slave who led a revolt of gladiators in 73 A.D. that became a slave army of 70,000 that caused the might of the Roman empire to tremble.  The season one finale ended with the beginning of the gladiator revolt, and it's title "Kill Them All" barely begins to describe the carnage.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but the finale leaves very few loose ends alive.   This is the best written original period piece since HBO's Rome and Deadwood.  It's a shame for Starz that season two is in doubt, because frankly I never watched the Starz network before Spartacus.

  As reminiscent as the early episodes of Spartacus seemed like the extended slo-mo bloodbath of 300, Andy Whitfield's portrayal of Spartacus is much more nuanced and carefully developed than Gerard Butler's Spartan king Leonides in 300.  Butler's hero started as a king and ended as a martyr who uttered such great lines as, "TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL." Spartacus as portrayed by Whitfield was a free warriar from Thrace  turned Roman ally turned fugitive and slave. His descent into submission and gratitude is equalled only by his cold fury at his betrayal, not to mention his rise as a champion gladiator.

  I'm sure this series will gain viewers as well as legend the longer it is available on demand. 

THERE'S A SCENE IN EPISODE TWO of HBO's miniseries John Adams where George Washington (David Morse) pays a visit to Abigail Adams (Laura Linney) and describes the annihilation awaiting New York City by the reinforced British army, now out for blood since their staggering losses at Lexington and Concord where one thousand redcoats were killed or wounded. Abigail Adams says to George Washington,"That such evil should befall to people. Could it be punishment for the sin of slavery?" Washington looks downward, emits a half laugh "Hmpff" in contemplation, and says finally and softly, "I cannot say."

A scene like that, so human, so dramatic, so intimate, is at the core of this wonderful series. Washington, the patrician slave owner from Virginia, commander in chief of the Continental Army, compelled to speechless acquiesence before conscience of a Massachusattes farmer's wife. And not two days after that episode aired for the first time last Sunday, Barack Obama would take the stage at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia where he would attempt to speak candidly about the issue of race, and the legacy of "America's original sin," the legal sanction of human bondage. As William Faulkner reminded us, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

One of the most effecting scenes in episode two is the arguement over a vote for independence during the Second Continental Congress between John Adams and John Dickinson, leader of the Pennsylvania delegation, who urged caution in the face of the military might of what was then the most powerful army in the world. The fact that Dickinson is played by a Yugoslavian immigrant named Zeljko Inavek and Adams is played by Paul Giamatti adds a certain bittersweet irony to the equally compelling arguements by both principled men.

In the end Independence won the day because Dickinson abstained from the vote, and yet when the Declaration of Independence was read for the first time from the steps of Independence Hall, Dickinson is shown listening astride a horse dressed as an officer in the Continental Army. The dove who lost the vote for peace still donned the military uniform of his country.

When I read David McCullough's biography of John Adams, a scene I remember is that of John Adams, then president of the United States, in his nightshirt manning a Philadelphia volunteer bucket brigade during a fire in the middle of the night. The burning building belonged to a print shop that published the harshly critical newspaper supported by Adams' political enemies.

Think of that image. . .the president of the United States in his pajamas passing buckets to save the property of a man who hates his guts. It's pretty powerful stuff. I believe we will see that moment in the miniseries because episode one foreshadows that event by showing Adams running to fill a bucket from a frozen water pump at the shout of "Fire!" which turned out to be a turning point in American history called the Boston Massacre.