WHEN IN ROME, CANCEL IT
For the Canberra Times, Tuesday 3 October 2006


This week it was going to be all about the brilliant series Rome on the Nine Network. Oh, I was going to give the thesaurus a shellacking (see: superlatives). By jingo, I was going to say, they've all done us proud, delivering tippety-top quality television.

I was going to speak as lyrically as possible about this magnetic portrayal of real historical events, which happened to be perpetrated by the sort of sexually debauched, busy-yet -idle, gossip-steeped, rich twits (if that's how you spell it) who make Paris Hilton look like a volunteer for Medicin Sans Frontiers with a double-degree in biochemistry. The sort of folk who are not just rude to waiters, they whack their slaves around the ears with an antique version of the cat'o'nine-tails.

Even the opening credits of Rome are arresting; I was going to bang on about their mixture of the sumptuous and the bawdy. Series creators (HBO - Home Box Office - that lighthouse of quality TV) seem to have literally created a world; one set is a whole district around a square of ancient Rome, flagstones, spice market, brothel and all. Then there are the lavish military tents.

I was going to faff on about how amazing it is that now, a middle class person in Australia lives in more comfort than a Roman emperor of them thar times, in terms of available heating, medical care and underwear. (No wonder centurions had Visible Panty Line.) The costumes in this series would have been up for an Oscar if they were in a movie.

As well as the airy scheming of the upper class, and the windbags in the Senate (it's merely historical, you understand) the series shows the mud and blood suffered by the men who followed Julius Caesar into battle, staying away from home, fighting, for eight years. If you were studying Roman history (can you still do that?) this would be the most fabulous way to help imagine yourself there at the time - but would you imagine yourself in a senatorial toga, or grovelling to a prince?

You'd want to know about the characters in Rome. Caesar himself, and the usual grasping, vile scheming woman who likes bathing in the blood of slaughtered beasts (typical), and a couple of beefy soldiers played by two guys, the sort who get the call after Clive Owen and Daniel Craig have turned down a role. It was going to be a challenge to try to convey the overflowing cornucopia of love, power, passion, betrayal, textiles, jewellery, weapons, interwoven stories, the hopes of slaves, the blood lust of rulers. This is telly with the production values of a blockbuster movie, although thankfully without Colin Farrell in surferboy hair, or Orlando Bloom looking like a cross Hello Kitty on a horse.

It takes a while to get used to the British accents and sensibilities in the series - I guess it was a way of immediately establishing the idea of a rigid class system. So far no slave has said, "Ere, what's all this then?" but in the first episode, for 'alf a mo, it's a tad Upstairs Downstairs Carry On Up The Coliseum. But you soon forget, and go with it, because it's brilliant, wonderful, fabulous television.

But nerny nerny ner, now you can't watch Rome, because guess what? After less than a handful of eps, the Nine Network has just pulled it off the schedule, and can't quite say when it might be back. Perhaps all that plotting and gossip about regime change just seemed a little distasteful. Speaking of taste, instead, they'll be screening the American Survivor series in which "tribes" are instructed to form along racial lines.

So today's column will be about dancing. Dancing with the STARS, I tell you! (Seven Network, Tuesdays 7.30 pm.) In this show, persons of notoriety are paired with professional ballroom dancers, and must perform a dance each week.

This leaves so many questions unanswered. How is a constant supply of cozzies kept up? Daryl Somers? Can we see the list of celebrities who said they wouldn't be in it? Why do people agree to do stuff that makes them terrified?

Last week we got our first look at the dancing moves of a basketballer, an AFL player, a chess player, an athlete, some actors and a "racing identity", which somehow sounds so very much more respectable than "prominent racing identity".

Well, I know it's early stages but I'm barracking for prominent radio and TV identity Amanda Keller. I met her once and she was really, really nice. Plus, she has to do all that training, dance in public, then have people with cat's bum mouths (the judges) be rude to her, and then get up at 4 am and do breakfast radio in Sydney. The judges always pick on the funny girl (they were mean to Kate Langbroek), even while the producers demand game ladies of good cheer. You watch. Unless, you know, you can get Rome on DVD, or something.