Simon T. Kaye

Don't worry, this isn't the Enterprise

 My dad introduced me to Star Trek. As a child, my brain was quickly filled up with the incredible idealism, aspiration and earnest good-nature at the heart of the show. I loved it. I loved the original series best of all, but the others were just great, too. I memorised the technical manual. I subscribed to the ‘Fact Files’ for years (though they contained very few ‘facts’).

Voyager was the beginning of the end for this love-affair. Maybe it was just a matter of timing – maybe I started to see how often the plots were being recycled, got to that stage in adolescence where cynicism overpowers optimism. The films took a turn for the worse, as well. Enterprise… well, Enterprise just had an appalling theme tune. I’ve been secretly trying to chew my way through the supposedly less-awful third season for a while now, and it’s tough going.

To cut to the chase, I lost interest. Th0ugh whole sectors of my brain remain dedicated to the layout of Deck 17’s Jeffrey’s Tubes and the middle name of Picard’s brother’s wife’s Tribble, I felt alienated from the show and the films. It seemed stolid, unrealistic, badly written and lazy. And to think that I could have learnt a language instead (no, I don’t count Klingon).

So just as it’s impossible to explain fully what a Star Trek obsession meant to this bullied little boy, it’s very hard to outline quite what put me off, either. But my dad? He was there before me, and he stuck around after I moved on as well. So it was clearly paramount (phnarr) that he and I see this latest entry together.

Let me try to put this in context: dad wore a T-shirt to the screening. On this T-shirt: a massive front-and-back image of Quark the Ferengi’s snaggle-toothed face, and a bit of text outlining some of the Rules of Acquisition. My dad can put most geeks to shame. He’s been doing it for a lot longer, to be fair.

A curious fact: out of all Star Trek, the original series has aged the least. It’s design ethic and budget are so clearly from a different age of television that the clunk and quirk that seem inexcusable in the more recent series are instantly forgiven. The writing is fantastic in places, some of the science fiction ideas are real classics, and the central triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy (the holy trinity; the warrior, the mage and the cleric; the ego, the superego and the id) still sparkles on today.

It’s these mechanics that the new film had to live up to, really: the emotional and science-fiction heart of Trek that has kept the first series fresh for decades. Or so I thought. (I’m actually moving into a review now, honest).

This film has no ’science fiction’ in it. It’s purest fantasy. There’s no exploration of philosophy, future politics, moral dilemmas or the like. And it doesn’t spend a hell of a lot of time developing characters, either. This is not the film of the original series. This is, in fact, the film that would be made from the original series if there had never been any films or spin-offs.

Draw a line right after the last episode of Season 3 of Kirk’s adventures. Or perhaps after Spock’s death in the Wrath of Khan. (Or, okay, just after the end of the third film). Now build a movie.

What’s the upshot? It makes Star Trek magical again. I’m not going to witter on about how it relates to the post-Obama optimism of a new era or helps us forget our credit-crunched woes. It’s a good film because it has surprising reverence for the mythology that gives Trekkers wet-dreams  – and successfully translates the stylistic and historical essence of Trek into a modern, self-aware cinematic language.

For the record, I’m wondering if this is the first in-universe reboot in the history of cinema. We are tied to the timeline we remember, and all deviations from it are excused, in one elegant sweep of J.J.Abrams’ pen. It’s the best possible utilisation and acceptance of everything that’s come before: this is the timeline that we want. It’s the utopia, Dr Pangloss’s best of all possible worlds. Our understanding of all other Star Trek forms the emotional weight for this reboot.

This is just as well, because the film could use another ten minutes of character moments and dialogue. Who thought that anyone would ever write that about a Star Trek film?

Any other problems? Well, the Macguffins arguably fly a little too thick and too fast. There are few attempts to make plausible the ‘magical’ parts of the plot. What the hell is this ‘red matter’? I understand the appeal of just being shown what it can do, and the urgent need to minimise on technobabble. But… it’s unsatisfying. Similarly, our Romulan baddie, while overall very competently played by Eric Bana, seems to have minimal motivation for chasing Spock through time and blowing up whole worlds, Death-Star style (by the way, I love that his ship is just some miner in the future and it can totally outgun everything in Kirk’s era. I also love the idea of destroying a planet by making a big hole in it and planting a black hole). Yes, Romulus was destroyed. But Spock tried to save it. It’s not enough to say that you’ve spent a couple of decades “forgetting normal life”.

I have every expectation that this sort of problem is solved by the accompanying prequel comic-books, but the film ought to sort out motivations properly, at least.

Spock is more emotional in this film than in his previous incarnations. The attempt to explain this seems to be based on his fundamental decision to go to Starfleet instead of try for the Kohlinar, the ceremony that’s supposed to eradicate emotion altogether. But it’s still a departure. In fact, of all the new actors approaches to the classic roles, I think I find Zachary Quinto’s the most difficult to swallow.

But I’m nitpicking really. This is a great film, and it’s clearly being positioned to replace Star Wars and fill that yawning gap for big budget sci-fi adventures. It’s charming and funny.

I love that Kirk’s cheat on the Kobayashi-Maru is finally shown to us. I love that the new Enterprise is gorgeous. I love the way the film starts with a bang, and ends with an awesome version of the original theme tune (thanks, mr. Giacchino). I look forward to the rest of the trilogy (please please please).

Last word: my dad, more suspicious of this ‘rebooting’ nonsense than I, said that he loved it. Let’s just trust him on that.

So here are couple of things I want to write aloud about. They interest me enough to drag me out of the hermetically-sealed Study Capsule into which I have intentionally interred myself for the duration of this final term of undergraduate study. Let me tell you what these things are, let me tell you why.

The first thing isn’t really a big thing, and it certainly isn’t a new thing. But when did there start to be just so much television programming about… television programmes?

The second thing is big and startling. It is that something original has happened on ITV. I’m not talking about introducing a presenter to News broadcasts, that was decades ago. For the second time in its history, ITV has done something original with its programming.

So let’s think about this astonishing post-modern reflexiveness that’s inflicted itself on the television media over the past- well, five years or so? I don’t really know. It probably started with one of those fly-on-the-wall documentaries that was so popular in the 90s. And don’t forget the shows that popped up to mock those- I’m talking about Chris Morris, with the Day Today and Brasseye. They were focussed on News, Current Affairs and Documentary spoofing, granted, but a more self-aware comedy show hasn’t been produced since.

Until now, that is. But we can come back to Moving Wallpaper.

So we woke up to how incredibly contrived TV news really was as Chris Morris orchestrated a war between Australia and Britain, just so he could use the shiny new WAR!!! graphic on his current affairs show. And maybe this is what started the trend. Big Brother became boring to me after two series or so, and I can only assume that the rest of mankind is just four of five years behind me. But then Big Brother’s Little Brother came onto the scene.

A little Montel/Kilroy thing, half an hour long, with people talking about… nothing. I honestly thought Chris Morris had struck again, only too subtly to be funny. Is this a kind of a Seinfeld thing? No. It’s a show about another show. If the other show didn’t exist, this one wouldn’t either. And… it’s popular. The new(ish) digital channels proved to be a perfect venue  for these televisual nonentities, and soon they were everywhere. Each Reality TV programme had (and has) its very own companion-piece, a few seconds later and just a channel-flick away.

And then came Doctor Who Anonymous. Material that would otherwise (and rightly) have been consigned to a DVD special edition or slick website was suddenly thrust out as a part of the main event. Like the cartoon they used to show before the main feature at the movies only, you know, a bit shit.

Perhaps something similar has been happening in the USA. I can’t claim to be that up to date with it all. But I do know about Aaron Sorkin’s abortive, disappointing and unctuous Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Don’t we all! The man who created the west wing got to work with two of the most entertaining american language-comedians… and decided to mop up the two dozen or so plot lines he had left over for the West Wing when he left that instead of actually telling us something interesting about his new characters; instead of telling us a story. The language was great. Nothing else was. But here’s something worth pointing out: a dramedy about the creation of television. Just like its (much better) estranged, battling brother: 30 Rock.

Oh how we laughed. Not just at the smart funnies, the slapstick, the timing and Alec Baldwyn. At the coincidences. Because 30 is, like, half of 60. And Rock is for Rockefeller Plaza and the Sunset Strip is a place as well. It’s TOO WEIRD.

So America has its share of navel-gazing television material. Exactly half of it is brilliant, and accordingly will keep on getting made. Law of the JUNGLE.

So, given all of this, what do you think is the least likely television network to take notice of a zeitgeist, to extrapolate it, to have a genuinely brilliant idea and execute it at high speed? ITV?

Well, it’s a funny old world. Obama lost New Hampshire. David Davis lost the Tory Leadership. And ITV created Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach.

If you’re not familiar, the concept is, like all good concepts, incredibly simple. Echo Beach is a moderately racy soap opera. Moving Wallpaper is the half-hour comedy about the team that creates it. Who really created both? Kudos, naturally, the production company responsible for practically every decent new fiction to be found on British TV these days (can you say Life on Mars?).

So in this first episode, for example, Moving Wallpaper showed the creation of the Echo Beach pilot, and ended at the exact moment that the writers and producers sat down together to watch it air. Queue brief ad-break to herald the return of News at Ten next monday, and we’re into the action at Echo Beach.

This stuff works best when we can wiggle into the sofa and congratulate ourselves for belonging to the club. The genius here is that Kudos has already generated the kind of in-jokes and knowing winks that most shows would need half a dozen episodes to set in motion. A wry comment in Moving Wallpaper about sticking someone in a miniskirt? There she is in the background. A funny moment with a child actor being made to cry? She’s howling in Echo Beach. A desperate actress gives an executive a blow job to get to say one line in Echo’s pub. And there she is, saying it, milking it (is that good acting or bad acting? Who knows?) and then instantly eclipsed by two other minor characters.

Moving Wallpaper is the clever half of the relationship. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not brilliant. It has an awfully long way to go before it can live up to its promise. But our protagonist is a somewhat likeable Simon Cowell impersonator. And they’re making an effort to make little jokes, and there’s no laughter track. It’s trying so hard! Impossible not to be a little wooed. Now they just need to tell their worse actors to do what bad american actors do- say it fast, and at least you’ll come across as quick and smart.

It’s the perennial problem of British TV: for whatever reason, we’re incredibly short of decent actors. Everything always seems as though it ought to be on stage. It troubles Moving Wallpaper. It completely blights Echo Beach.

Martine McCutcheon is almost certainly an absolute sweetheart, but she’s desperately unconvincing. Echo quickly reveals its hand- this isn’t clever meta-telly at all; it’s a cynical answer to Channel 4’s Hollyoaks and, latterly and more pressingly, Skins (Skins may be edgier, but it’s also stupider. It’s alienating me and almost everyone who isn’t over 30 or under 14, because we KNOW that high school is nothing like that).

It’s basically The O.C. set in Cornwall. And it’s exactly as dumb as that sentence looks. It also completely fails to make up for this, Californication-style, by including loads of sex, despite the fact that it airs after the watershed. It’s a pity, because if it was just a little more rubbish it could be merrily accepted as an intentionally bad appendix to the otherwise rather watchable Moving Wallpaper.

But both shows have time to improve. We can find out tomorrow night if they do, when the second episodes air on ITV1. In the meantime, let’s celebrate a really very, very clever idea. And mourn that it wasn’t made in America first.

Got the urge to write a list (perhaps you know what I mean?)

So here we are: my own personal current Top Five Albums for listening to all the way through. Properly. From Start To Finish. AS ALBUMS.

In no particular order, and liable to change:

Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around

Cash’s voice only got better as he aged. This is probably the most depressing album I’ve ever listened to. It is almost utterly maudlin, a descent into musical grief- over ageing, over lost friends, over missed opportunities and loneliness. Even the higher-tempo songs and the occasions of lighter bluegrass seem deeply ironic, or skewed somehow toward sadness. But the lyricism is phenomenal, the cover-versions beautifully selected, the recording treatment tastefully textured and Cash’s voice cracking, dry and warm. And then there’s the final lift, We’ll Meet Again. And with it, the sun emerges. Here is Cash’s final video, which he made for his cover of Trent Reznor’s Hurt.

Pulp: His n’ Hers

Not as successful as Different Class, but a stronger all-over album. Pulp here give us the absolute apogee of the Britpop episode, with an album that’s infused with energy and humour, Pulp’s trademark intelligence allowing for guilty-pleasure songs that are pure adrenaline from start to finish. She’s a Lady is seminal.

Brian Wilson: Smile

It was such a long time coming. But this is simply happy on a disc. The production values are immense and the anachronistic optimism of re-approaching a Beach Boys album- say, Pet Sounds- is brought to a new, popular and ageless life. Plus a much, much stronger new version of Good Vibrations to chew on.

Supertramp: Breakfast in America

I do love a good concept album. This is certainly the best I can think of off the top of my head, essentially a musical dialogue between Britain and the USA, both in terms of style and lyrics. The songs sweep from powerful hooks to adrenaline-buzz finales via the best bits of a dozen genres, and none of it has aged even a single day. The title track has been essentially raped by some heav sampling in appalling music recently.

David Bowie: Aladdin Sane

My favourite Bowie album seems to change every time I listen to one again. Right now, the filthy, cheekily debauched antics of Aladdin Sane are rocking my boat. It’s never been appreciated on the same level as Ziggy Stardust, and this is a huge mistake. Aladdin essentially does for the American rocker what Ziggy did for a more British tradition. He’s a remarkable character, and rewards repeated listening.

How about you guys?

Okay, I know I’m a little behind the curve here. Everyone and their uncle have already completed Bioshock three times, one for each different ending (well… two-and-a-half endings, I suppose), and once on Hard so that they can get their final, shiny XBox 360 ‘achievement’. And a great deal of these people have taken the time to write about it.

It’s one of those games, where the disparate, hazy community of hobbyists seems to surge into debate as one. Where you don’t feel like you’re done with it until you’ve talked about it. Head over to RockPaperShotgun for a collection of excellent critiques and links to reviews, interviews etc.- including an encounter with Bioshock’s creator, Ken Levine, that’s really a must-read.

All of this- and much of what shall follow here, to be sure- is riddled with spoilers. If you live on the moon or have no real interest in the medium, then you might be unaware of the fact that Bioshock includes one of the all-time-greatest-ever twists of anything ever, somewhere just after the middle of the game. If there’s ever any chance that you’ll pick it up to play for more than a few hours together, you DO NOT WANT TO HAVE THIS TWIST SPOILED FOR YOU. So stop reading, please. And stop reading comment threads, articles, reviews, walkthroughs or editorials from the gaming community until you’re done with Bioshock. Look, just play it, alright?

It’s unlikely that I’m going to have anything to say here that hasn’t already been mentioned by others already. All the same, and perhaps with an eye to my rant of a few weeks ago, here are some thoughts.

Firstly, I’m glad I took my time over the game. I got it the day after it was released, and have played it slowly ever since. This morning I finished, which is perfect because as of next week I’ll actually be a busy human being again. Now, the forums are stuffed with people bragging about how they completed the game in one or two sittings, with only ten or less hours of play. And there’s some strength to the argument that games, in general, are far shorter than they used to be, and whether or not this is a Good Thing. But I am very thankful that I had stuff to do, and so couldn’t follow my impulse to storm through the game in a couple of all-nighters. The richness of the environment, of the atmosphere- decaying, retrograde 1950s art-deco opulance- absolutely demands reflection.

And it’s this that leads to my first real criticism of the game. It’s too busy. I recognize that the tight, enclosed space of the game helps lend it much of its horror, and makes possible the kind of closed-circuit mechanic (gatherer/hunter/guardian) that makes the whole thing special. But it’s stuffed with action, and noise, and light, and movement (voluntary or otherwise). Momentum is one thing, yes- but there isn’t a spot in the game where you can simply observe your world without the loud buzz of a nearby camera, the maniacal shrieks of some splicer in the distance (boy do voices carry underwater), the thump, groan and miniature earthquakes of a Big Daddy that you haven’t got around to dealing with yet. There isn’t enough space to make the whole thing feel like a city, which is what it’s supposed to feel like. Horror and action work best where the breaks feel like breaks, where you can contrast the action and the fear with, erm, absence of action and fear. The game, on occasion, was simply too loud. The Thief series arguably does it far better-and freedom, too. But more of that later.

If I had created a soundtrack and effects as sumptuous as these, I’d probably play them loud as well. The voice-acting is simply the best I have ever encountered in a video game, as is the script. The game’s plot and twists are very script- and delivery- dependent, and a lesser game might have let you down on this.

It’s also these twists that make Bioshock, I suspect, the first game to contain a truly effective critique of the medium. After having my own poodleish antics thrown in my face as they were here, it’s actually going to be hard picking up another shooter anytime soon without seeing the lines, the joins, the places where all the bloody orders just stop making sense. In this sense, Bioshock is not just a great story- it’s a story that could only have been told as a computer game. This alone sets it on a plinth, in the company of very few others. That it also takes the time to say something we didn’t know we were all already thinking, to be truly reflexive, almost Brechtian in tearing down the third wall, showing us a mechanic for what it is… that’s just phenomenal.

Part of the strength here is in subverting a fundamental weakness. Compared to Deus Ex, Bioshock is practically a half-life-esque linear shooter. Slightly disappointingly, this doesn’t really alter after we have the essential nature of our hobby used as a major plot point. My initial excitement at realising I had to collect some elixir but that there were two batches of it in different parts of the game world was quickly quashed. I needed both, of course. What looked like a big decision turned into a minor one- not ‘what would you like to do?’ but ‘what order would you like to do it in?’.

This holds true throughout. Real divergences and areas not required by the main plot are few and far between. This is a retrospective qualm, however, as I felt constantly driven by the game’s plot- even in the final third. There was enough emotional investment to make me seriously want to push through to the end. Most games don’t offer you such a compulsive experience. If they do, you can be damn sure they won’t give you much of an option to ignore it. Bioshock does, in places, and that’s nearly a miracle.

And the key mechanic for the game’s compulsion is where Bioshock’s ’spiritual successor’ status comes in. Both of your key enemies in the game are essentially godlike, and this is a direct echo of System Shocks 1 and 2. Atlas/Fontaine (note the references to Rand’s books here in the monikers of our key nemesis) and Andrew Ryan all, inevitably, remind us of Shodan. And the best thing I can advise you to do here is read and enjoy Kieron Gillen’s essay on the queen of all game villains, here. Come back when you’re done.

Shodan, of course, was the real Deus Ex Machina – or Deus Est Machina. As a gameplay mechanic, she was a stroke of genius. We fear specific things- death, the unknown. More than these we fear a malevolent god. And Ryan, in the first part of the game, fulfils these same roles. As you progress, he mocks you, taunts you. He sets traps for you, punishes you for resisting him. When one god is felled- not because you defeated him but because the bastard ordered you to, to prove a point- our new, worse deity takes over. This one really is the devil, because he’s a trickster. Like any trickster, he gave you all the clues you needed- visual suggestions- the tattoos on your arms, the momentary flashbacks, the repetitions of that phrase.

This is why I don’t think the game’s finale- the much admonished Boss Fight- was a bad idea. In fact, I enjoyed it. I’m not a truly skilful gamer, and so found that the difficulty was pitched just right- frustration vs. excitement. The plasmid/tonic technologies even give a decent in-game excuse for such a titanic figure to struggle against, which is more than I can say for most games. Like every other part of Bioshock, this last section was self-aware. It was The Way Games End. It was a Boss. The removal of your regeneration system was important here. too. You fought, you died, you fought harder. Eventually you won, and you felt that familiar flush of victory- and then you hated yourself for it, because the game’s just told you that you’re playing a game. But critically, in an experience where you can’t die, not ever, where all your fear and anger stems from a sequence of gods- you are given the power and the opportunity to destroy one. Not because you were told to- but because you wanted to. That’s satisfaction.

Andrew Ryan’s ‘utopia’ of Rapture is an explicit and repeated homage to the works and philosophies of Ayn Rand. To what extent is it a critique of them? As the man himself intones: “It wasn’t impossible to build a Rapture at the bottom of the ocean. It was impossible to build it anywhere else.”

Levine has said that he is attacking absolutism- in that any absolute ideology is dangerous. But I believe that Ryan represents the impossible predicament of a totally anarchistic society. He betrays his own ideals in order to attempt to do away with Fontaine, nationalising assets, forming armies, even introducing state-led capital punishment. Bit of a departure for the ultimate libertarian. The destabilising element is, of course, a twisted side of human nature. Fontaine is a crook with ambitions. Within a super-capitalist society such as Rapture, he is free to become the biggest fish in the pond. The ultimate flaw with Objectivist ideology, as with any, is that there will always be someone willing to subvert it to their own ends (in this case, a nihilistic con-man).

There’s so much to be said about this great work. It neatly summarises everything a piece of interactive art should be. Embrace it, love it like a brother. Lose yourself to Rapture. I really feel that there’s no coming back. The only first-person games that appear remotely palatable after this are Half Life, Thief, the first Deus Ex and maybe sandbox games like Oblivion or GTA.

Rapture really has changed the world.

Apologies for the lack of update lately. Here’s something I just ran across, just to keep you sweet until I have more free time. To my mind it’s the best thing that Canadian director David Cronenberg ever put together, a little piece entitled ‘Camera’ originally produced for one film festival or another. Enjoy.

Well, it’s got to be better than History of Violence, right?

I shall write again soon- thinking of starting a sort of TV reviews roundup thing. Though I suppose there are plenty of other sites out there doing the same thing, I really feel the need to write a bit about the British stuff, which tends to be a touch under-represented.

Well, I polished it off within 36 hours of buying it. And managed to tour the entirety of Vlad Tepes’ birthplace, Sighisoara, at the same time. And get a pretty good night’s sleep in. And travel a little over 300 kilometers.

So that has to count for something.

‘Deathly Hallows’ is a very good book. It remains, as does all of the Harry Potter series, the literary equivalent of crack cocaine: you get into it grudgingly, or with a false sense of expectations; you suspect, deep down, that it can’t be doing you any good; you cringe at the effects it exerts upon you, time and again; and, above all else, it is absolutely bloody addictive.

So as I fight the cold turkey with a nice bottle or five of Ice Tea, I think I’ll get a few Potter thoughts out of my system. Please note: Every effort shall be made to exclude spoilers from the following. However, some shall undoubtedly sneak in all the same. Read on at your own risk.

‘Deathly Hallows’ is probably the best of the series. In fact, if some poor soul was in the situation that he or she could only read two of the J.K.Rowling’s books, I think I could almost instantly recommend this most recent effort, and the third book, ‘Prisoner of Azkaban’, which certainly stands up in my own memory as the strongest of that early stage of Potter adventures.

Is ‘Deathly Hallows’ perfect? Absolutely not. Many of Rowling’s inadequacies linger, especially in terms of style, though it would be true to say that her writing has never been stronger in general. The book, in general, feels a little overloaded with information and plot-heavy. It’s enough to make you question how much of this was actually pre-planned, and how much sprang into existence as Rowling came to this final episode.

This problem becomes most evident towards the end of the book- some of the later chapters are just truckloads of exposition; lengthy conversations between only two characters that repeat or make explicit what many readers probably already cottoned on to by themselves. What really grates is when Rowling uses these sections to unveil a big event, or twist, or important new fact: showing is, of course, always better than telling.

It’s testament to how lovable Rowling’s characters are that this can be passed over as a relatively minor flaw. The end of the book is in fact incredibly exhilerating, and, for me at least, more than matches up to the impossibly expectations heaped upon it ahead of publication.

And the famous deaths: Yes, many characters die in this book. Many of them are much-loved. But at no point does Rowling make a death into a cheap trick to raise the emotional stakes: each is well measured, and tends to emphasise, rather than undermine, the book’s literary symmetry. Ooh, have I said too much?

Interestingly, Rowling almost seems to have left the door open for a successor series, if not a sequence of outright sequels. You’ll see what I mean when you get to the end of the book.

I personally would certainly not mind more adventures set within Rowling’s fascinating and imaginative world. I’ve never bought into the whole “too much of a good thing” theory. As long as it’s well done, I don’t see why the Potter saga ever really has to end at all.

Wishful thinking, yes. But I suspect that was Rowling’s point all along, don’t you?

… to the UK, and how. The first season ended on such a high; a sequence of episodes which included the high political maneuverings of Caesar, the omens of his destruction, the single most gory arena battle ever committed to celluloid, the rending of a family by infidelity, the incestuous seduction of a future emperor…

 It’s wonderful, really. Rome is interesting because it decides to be absolutely as historically accurate as it possibly can in the most weird places- setting and period detail, backdrops and sets, cultural taboos and sexual mores, while paying very little attention to the actual accepted narrative of the era it portrays. And it really does work; it feels authentic enough for us to suspend our disbelief even as it re-renders an ancient story to fit its medium.

And this is nothing new; when Shakespeare was writing his great Roman plays, he certainly only paid cursory attention to actual alliances and facts as they were then understood. When Robert Graves wrote I, Claudius- in every sense Rome’s precursor- He put his audience ahead of some bookish obsession with absolute historical accuracy. See also the new Thermopylae film, 300.

It shows an acceptance of several important points: firstly, the greatness of these original stories, these narrative inheritances, is in their themes, not their facts. The stories of Troy and Alexander, Persia, Greece and Rome are the templates upon which a narrative tradition was founded. They are blueprints, their earlier incarnations (when history was not so clearly delineated from story) as subjective as the more recent attempts to turn the past into art and entertainment (hopefully a bit of both at the same time).

Implicitly, this kind of production displays a snippet of real wisdom: that any attempt at a historical drama is immediately and automatically divorced from the literal facts of its historical context. And this does not need to be a bad thing. Historians themselves are only ever working with second-hand, subjective material. There is no ‘primary source’ which was never itself secondary Not even the buried stones of an ancient culture are immune from the fact that they were crafted.

So let’s enjoy a bit of modern, artistically driven historical truth; the kind of truth that resides in Rome’s hilariously undiluted attitude to sex (“I’m not leaving this bed until I’ve fucked something.” “Fine! Go and fetch that German slut from the kitchen…”), or in Rome’s playful references to the still-popular version of events propagated by Shakespeare (“It wasn’t a bad speech, Brutus… maybe a bit cerebral for that crowd…”).

And, best of all, it’s beautifully written, passionately performed, seductively filmed and has absolutely glorious production values.

Rome Season 2 Episode 1 repeats on the BBC tonight a little before midnight. Watch it.