Post by Leanne on Aug 28, 2009 6:18:53 GMT -5
Rome: the city that never slept
It's sandals and togas time at the Beeb again - with a good dose of lust and death too in Rome, says Pauline McLeod
Recommend? Polly Walker can’t locate her bedroom, which seems slightly odd since the character she plays is spending so much time in it entertaining her lovers. Some days she is simply too busy to get dressed. The libidinous sexual predator that Walker is bringing to the small screen is Julius Caesar’s manipulative niece, Atia of the Julii, who looks set to become the most deliciously evil and cunning mother yet to grace the small screen. It is hardly surprising that she’s having difficulty finding the bedroom. She’s on a set the size of a small English village: six soundstages and five acres of backlot at the Cinecittà film studios in Rome, transformed into its bygone city. We are back in 52BC, Gaius Julius Caesar has completed his masterly conquest of Gaul, and after eight years of war, is preparing to return home.
Yes, it’s sandals and toga time again. But not as we know it — Rome is an audacious co-production between the BBC and the American cable giant HBO, a mix of The Sopranos and The West Wing set in ancient, extremely unrepressed Roma. The series is such bold television that it’s had to be toned down for British viewers; too many profanities, even for BBC Two’s post-watershed scheduling. BBC controllers have no anxieties about the visceral, graphic violence or the explicit sex, but the “C-word” will not be given clearance for mainstream television. Not here it won’t, anyway. The Americans — their grandiose dictum: “This is not television: this is HBO” — of course, have no such qualms. They’re on cable and pushing the envelope is what they do. “It takes quite a bit to shock me,” admits Walker, “But I was, like: ‘Oh my God! I’ve got to do that?’ Some of the sex scenes were quite full-on and are not your typical, lighted-candle, lying-down-in-floaty-chiffon-with-gentle-music-wafting-around sort of love scenes. They are more animalistic, more basic — because the Romans didn’t attach the same emotions to sexual relationships as we do. It was simply a physical act. I did think, ‘Can I do this?’ but Atia is such an uninhibited character that once I’d accepted the role, I just had to go for it.
“I did find running around the garden with a whip, trying to beat up my children quite difficult,” adds the 39-year-old mother of two. “She found out they were having an incestuous relationship and she wasn’t best pleased, although she wasn’t morally bothered that they were sleeping together – just as she wasn’t morally bothered when she thought her son, Octavian, was sleeping with Julius Caesar. Actually, she thought it a rather a good power move.”
With that, the breezy actress returns to the task at hand – silkily patronising two soldiers, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who have plucked Octavian from a braying, murderous mob. The pre-Judeo-Christian world, where sexual morality simply didn’t exist and human life had little value, is seen through the eyes of these ordinary infantrymen of Caesar’s army, who form the heartbeat to this $100 million, 11-part super-soap, which HBO hopes will run for five seasons.
“Of the thousands who fought in Gaul, Vorenus and Pullo are the only two rank-and-file soldiers named in Caesar’s chronicles about the Gallic Wars,” explains Bruno Heller, 45, the LA-based, English lead writer on Rome. “He related an anecdote about these two men who had a personal rivalry and vied to outdo each other on the battlefield.” Heller took this factual crumb and ran with it, giving the centurion Vorenus a wife and family he hasn’t seen during his eight years in Gaul. Pullo, a lower-ranking legionary, is single and a “consummate roughneck”.
Ray Stevenson, a big, handsome Geordie, who had just finished filming the Bruckheimer epic King Arthur with Clive Owen when he was cast as Pullo, describes him as “a raping, pillaging whorer; a typical squaddie who doesn’t function well in peaceful life. But whether with women, or cards or battle, he always thinks he’ll get through. He is a lucky guy.” For 32-year-old Kevin McKidd (who played Tommy in Trainspotting), it was a beer in a bar in Spain with Liam Neeson while filming Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven that was the deciding moment for him to take on Vorenus. “Liam said: ‘You’ll be working with fantastic scripts and directors. It’s a no-brainer, Kev.’ ”
Ancient Rome, of course, was not just the Forum. As Jonathan Stamp, the garrulous historical adviser on the series, leads me down the newly created alleyways of the Suburra (suburbs) towards the communal latrines, it’s evident that his masters degree in classical studies has stood him in good stead. “That was for wiping your arse with,” he says helpfully, pointing to a sponge on a stick. “And I picked the crudest graffiti I could find in Pompeii so it could be carved into the stone-work.” Or in this instance, a fibreglass shell.
Schoolboy toilet humour aside, Stamp’s inexhaustible knowledge of all things archaic is so invaluable that the 42-year-old BBC executive was made an offer he couldn’t refuse by HBO, and is off to Hollywood, prepping Rome’s second season, which picks up where the first series finishes — the assassination of Caesar in 44BC — and will start filming next spring.
But why would HBO, synonymous with modern, ground-breaking drama, choose to make this colossal investment? A slow December back in 1997 is the answer, when the HBO executive Anne Thomapoulos watched the 1980s BBC series I, Claudius and was captivated. “The BBC has a great tradition of doing historical pieces and a fantastic reputation as one of the eminent broadcasters in the world,” she says.
The Brits are heavily involved: apart from the Italian artisans and some local crew, everyone in front of and behind the camera is British. McKidd and Stevenson are hardly surrounded by lightweights: Ciarán Hinds is Caesar, Lindsay Duncan, his lover, Servilia, James Purefoy is Mark Antony and Pompey is played by Kenneth Cranham. The English director Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist, the Bond movie The World is Not Enough), has been hired to shoot the first three episodes and so create the tone and pace.
On this unseasonably wet spring day, Apted is weighing up the consequences of not shooting Pompey’s wedding in the Forum — an elaborate and spectacular scene, already postponed twice because of poor conditions — the following morning. It requires 400 extras (technology will digitise them into 8,000) and bright sunshine. How wise to go with his better judgment because, indeed, it does rain. But not as much as it was to rain in Bulgaria, where the location for the Gaul battle scenes was all but washed away.
Surveying skies the colour of wet cotton wool, the 64-year-old director admits that the weather only adds to his anxieties. “In terms of logistics, if I hadn’t done Bond, I would be completely at sea here. It was such a learning curve — big crew, big units, different effects — and I don’t think anybody who hasn’t done a blockbuster could do this. Bond was a two-hour film, shot in 109 days, and on Rome I have half the time and almost twice the film.” This is a huge budget by common television standards, but HBO is not looking for common television.
“They’re all sitting in Los Angeles fretting about the tone and about their investment. It is a huge show, a huge commitment . . . They said to me they had never in their history scrutinised or analysed a project as they are scrutinising this.”
One of the conceits of Apted’s casting was to transpose the British class system on to Rome — hence, Stevenson speaks in “farm-boy Northumbria” and McKidd in Scottish Highlands. But the Hollywood executives decided that the accents were too strong for an American audience and needed to be toned down — easily resolved in a dubbing suite. After watching footage of the first three episodes, HBO also said that the sets looked too pristine. A production halt was called so that the set could be “weathered down”.
And as Jonathan Stamp and I tramp along the Via Sacra on the edge of the Suburra, a stone’s throw from where the veteran props master Arthur Wicks is counting out replicas of ancient coins — “A man in the Vatican made them for us cheaply” — the renowned archaeologist, says: “I have wandered around ancient sites that are one-tenth preserved for the past 25 years, and you come here and you don’t have to imagine
entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article583923.ece
It's sandals and togas time at the Beeb again - with a good dose of lust and death too in Rome, says Pauline McLeod
Recommend? Polly Walker can’t locate her bedroom, which seems slightly odd since the character she plays is spending so much time in it entertaining her lovers. Some days she is simply too busy to get dressed. The libidinous sexual predator that Walker is bringing to the small screen is Julius Caesar’s manipulative niece, Atia of the Julii, who looks set to become the most deliciously evil and cunning mother yet to grace the small screen. It is hardly surprising that she’s having difficulty finding the bedroom. She’s on a set the size of a small English village: six soundstages and five acres of backlot at the Cinecittà film studios in Rome, transformed into its bygone city. We are back in 52BC, Gaius Julius Caesar has completed his masterly conquest of Gaul, and after eight years of war, is preparing to return home.
Yes, it’s sandals and toga time again. But not as we know it — Rome is an audacious co-production between the BBC and the American cable giant HBO, a mix of The Sopranos and The West Wing set in ancient, extremely unrepressed Roma. The series is such bold television that it’s had to be toned down for British viewers; too many profanities, even for BBC Two’s post-watershed scheduling. BBC controllers have no anxieties about the visceral, graphic violence or the explicit sex, but the “C-word” will not be given clearance for mainstream television. Not here it won’t, anyway. The Americans — their grandiose dictum: “This is not television: this is HBO” — of course, have no such qualms. They’re on cable and pushing the envelope is what they do. “It takes quite a bit to shock me,” admits Walker, “But I was, like: ‘Oh my God! I’ve got to do that?’ Some of the sex scenes were quite full-on and are not your typical, lighted-candle, lying-down-in-floaty-chiffon-with-gentle-music-wafting-around sort of love scenes. They are more animalistic, more basic — because the Romans didn’t attach the same emotions to sexual relationships as we do. It was simply a physical act. I did think, ‘Can I do this?’ but Atia is such an uninhibited character that once I’d accepted the role, I just had to go for it.
“I did find running around the garden with a whip, trying to beat up my children quite difficult,” adds the 39-year-old mother of two. “She found out they were having an incestuous relationship and she wasn’t best pleased, although she wasn’t morally bothered that they were sleeping together – just as she wasn’t morally bothered when she thought her son, Octavian, was sleeping with Julius Caesar. Actually, she thought it a rather a good power move.”
With that, the breezy actress returns to the task at hand – silkily patronising two soldiers, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who have plucked Octavian from a braying, murderous mob. The pre-Judeo-Christian world, where sexual morality simply didn’t exist and human life had little value, is seen through the eyes of these ordinary infantrymen of Caesar’s army, who form the heartbeat to this $100 million, 11-part super-soap, which HBO hopes will run for five seasons.
“Of the thousands who fought in Gaul, Vorenus and Pullo are the only two rank-and-file soldiers named in Caesar’s chronicles about the Gallic Wars,” explains Bruno Heller, 45, the LA-based, English lead writer on Rome. “He related an anecdote about these two men who had a personal rivalry and vied to outdo each other on the battlefield.” Heller took this factual crumb and ran with it, giving the centurion Vorenus a wife and family he hasn’t seen during his eight years in Gaul. Pullo, a lower-ranking legionary, is single and a “consummate roughneck”.
Ray Stevenson, a big, handsome Geordie, who had just finished filming the Bruckheimer epic King Arthur with Clive Owen when he was cast as Pullo, describes him as “a raping, pillaging whorer; a typical squaddie who doesn’t function well in peaceful life. But whether with women, or cards or battle, he always thinks he’ll get through. He is a lucky guy.” For 32-year-old Kevin McKidd (who played Tommy in Trainspotting), it was a beer in a bar in Spain with Liam Neeson while filming Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven that was the deciding moment for him to take on Vorenus. “Liam said: ‘You’ll be working with fantastic scripts and directors. It’s a no-brainer, Kev.’ ”
Ancient Rome, of course, was not just the Forum. As Jonathan Stamp, the garrulous historical adviser on the series, leads me down the newly created alleyways of the Suburra (suburbs) towards the communal latrines, it’s evident that his masters degree in classical studies has stood him in good stead. “That was for wiping your arse with,” he says helpfully, pointing to a sponge on a stick. “And I picked the crudest graffiti I could find in Pompeii so it could be carved into the stone-work.” Or in this instance, a fibreglass shell.
Schoolboy toilet humour aside, Stamp’s inexhaustible knowledge of all things archaic is so invaluable that the 42-year-old BBC executive was made an offer he couldn’t refuse by HBO, and is off to Hollywood, prepping Rome’s second season, which picks up where the first series finishes — the assassination of Caesar in 44BC — and will start filming next spring.
But why would HBO, synonymous with modern, ground-breaking drama, choose to make this colossal investment? A slow December back in 1997 is the answer, when the HBO executive Anne Thomapoulos watched the 1980s BBC series I, Claudius and was captivated. “The BBC has a great tradition of doing historical pieces and a fantastic reputation as one of the eminent broadcasters in the world,” she says.
The Brits are heavily involved: apart from the Italian artisans and some local crew, everyone in front of and behind the camera is British. McKidd and Stevenson are hardly surrounded by lightweights: Ciarán Hinds is Caesar, Lindsay Duncan, his lover, Servilia, James Purefoy is Mark Antony and Pompey is played by Kenneth Cranham. The English director Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist, the Bond movie The World is Not Enough), has been hired to shoot the first three episodes and so create the tone and pace.
On this unseasonably wet spring day, Apted is weighing up the consequences of not shooting Pompey’s wedding in the Forum — an elaborate and spectacular scene, already postponed twice because of poor conditions — the following morning. It requires 400 extras (technology will digitise them into 8,000) and bright sunshine. How wise to go with his better judgment because, indeed, it does rain. But not as much as it was to rain in Bulgaria, where the location for the Gaul battle scenes was all but washed away.
Surveying skies the colour of wet cotton wool, the 64-year-old director admits that the weather only adds to his anxieties. “In terms of logistics, if I hadn’t done Bond, I would be completely at sea here. It was such a learning curve — big crew, big units, different effects — and I don’t think anybody who hasn’t done a blockbuster could do this. Bond was a two-hour film, shot in 109 days, and on Rome I have half the time and almost twice the film.” This is a huge budget by common television standards, but HBO is not looking for common television.
“They’re all sitting in Los Angeles fretting about the tone and about their investment. It is a huge show, a huge commitment . . . They said to me they had never in their history scrutinised or analysed a project as they are scrutinising this.”
One of the conceits of Apted’s casting was to transpose the British class system on to Rome — hence, Stevenson speaks in “farm-boy Northumbria” and McKidd in Scottish Highlands. But the Hollywood executives decided that the accents were too strong for an American audience and needed to be toned down — easily resolved in a dubbing suite. After watching footage of the first three episodes, HBO also said that the sets looked too pristine. A production halt was called so that the set could be “weathered down”.
And as Jonathan Stamp and I tramp along the Via Sacra on the edge of the Suburra, a stone’s throw from where the veteran props master Arthur Wicks is counting out replicas of ancient coins — “A man in the Vatican made them for us cheaply” — the renowned archaeologist, says: “I have wandered around ancient sites that are one-tenth preserved for the past 25 years, and you come here and you don’t have to imagine
entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article583923.ece