Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (2006)

Directors: Tim Dunn, Nick Green, Andrew Grieve, Nick Murphy, Arif Nurmohamed, Christopher Spencer

Writers: Andrew Grieve, Colin Heber-Percy, Jeremy Hylton Davies, Nick Murphy, Christopher Spencer, Lyall B. Watson, James Wood

Composers: Samuel Sim, Ty Unwin

Starring: Lyall B. Watson, James D'Arcy, Sean Pertwee, Michael Sheen, Ed Stoppard, David Threlfall, Pip Torrens, John Blakey, Jonathan Coy, Alex Ferns, James Wilby, Jonathan Hyde, Peter Firth, David Warner

More info: IMDb

Plot: A doc-drama covering the rise and the fall of the Roman world including the founding by Julius Caesar and the re-building of Rome by Nero.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I watched two of this six episode miniseries, the one on Caesar and then Nero and I was very disappointed.  This BBC production is lavish and it looks great.  You can tell that it had a nice budget.  What you get are little bits of narrated documentary cut with actual drama so there's this somewhat frequent back and forth.  The documentary bits are great but the dramatic recreations are not...they're often dull.  What's more, it was the dramatic bits that took up the lion's share of the episode.  I'm a massive fan of anything ancient Rome and I was so ready to devour this series but I gave up after the first two episodes.  The drama was largely unnecessary and anywhere from dull to mildly interesting.  I wanted to like it and I tried but it just wasn't happening.  Them's the breaks I guess.