Que Bruta Figura

Italian for, what an ugly sight, or as I will always remember, a line Marc Antony spoke to Cato in the HBO series ROME. My goodness, I can barely believe how good that series is, a simple 22 episodes of bliss. Me liking the series has nothing to do with the sex or violence, which there is plenty, my adoration is all about the political maneuvering of Caesar, Pompei, Brutus, Antony, Octavian and Cleopatra. Then on top of those cleverly and realistically delivered sequences, you have the relationship of Pullo and Vorenious, two very different Roman soldiers that give use, as modern people, a glimpse as to what life was like two thousand years ago in the centre of civilization. Then you have the conflict between Atita and Sevilla which ends in quite possibly the most dramatic and long lasting way such a thing could.

I could go on for hours about ROME, but I’m not here to just talk about that show, I want to make a general observation. Are we in the middle of an entertainment renaissance right now? I look at shows like Boston Legal which serve up poignant and life relevant messages every week, where they comment on how messed up the world is, and how nobody seems to care. Flip the channel and you have House, which takes you to a warm place in your heart for the biggest asshole on the planet, how can we all love the House character so much? I don’t know, but we all do.

The Shield is a truly masterful police drama, filming the show like a documentary was a brilliant move, the pilot is sooo over the top its golden. Everyone HATEed Vic Mackey after the first episode and only kept watching so you could see him go down, but now you WANT him to do his thing, he may push the limits but you can see that his goals justify any bent, or indeed broken, rules. He just follows a simply rule laid down by his old partner that was thrown off the force, just do more good than bad.

Battlestar Galactica, while being Sci-Fi, and suffering from the occasional off episode, really plays my heartstrings like a master pianist when they get things going right. Oh my, did you see the ending of All Along the Watchtowers? Could they have picked a better song for the montage, I think not. Those five minutes are going to have me on the edge of my seat for the next year and a half while I wait for the next episode to air.

I just wanted to get this out there for you all, if you want to watch TV, this is the golden age, I really don’t see it getting any better with new shows in the future. I do so love TV-on-DVD.