Review: “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” is Thought-Provoking Feast for the Eyes

Warning: This review discusses the identity of the gay character in Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

First, let’s talk loincloths.

Much ado has been made about the full-frontal female and male nudity on the new Starz show Spartacus: Blood and Sand, debuting this Friday, and the eye-candy is definitely there. But after all the hype and build-up, I confess I was a tad disappointed by this aspect of the show.

On the other hand, I can’t quite stop thinking about the loincloths on all the men. It’s impossible to watch the show and not be struck by all the impressive male bodies on display – and the attractive way those loincloths feature those bodies.

In the case of Spartacus's costume design, less is more, but sometimes a little more is more too.

But the great appeal of this show, for gay viewers and everyone else, is about much more than just the loincloths. All that other hype about how, like the movie 300, the show is filmed almost entirely in CGI and how “revolutionary” it all is?

It’s absolutely spot-on. If Avatar used CGI to reset the bar for movie-going, Spartacus is resetting the bar for TV-watching. It’s a fascinating, wholly successful TV experiment.

The series tells of the story of the real-life slave Spartacus who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire in 71 B.C. But of course, it’s as much about actual “history” as was Xena: Warrior Princess, the campy but breathtakingly creative earlier show from the same producing team of Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi.

But unlike Xena, Spartacus plays it straight. And while the highly-stylized, comic book-style “look” of the series is nothing like how Ancient Rome really was – I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but many real-life gladiators looked more like Sumo wrestlers than the sleek, gym-toned hunks featured here – the show does touch on some pretty interesting truths about the social milieu of that time in history.

Basically, there were two kinds of people in Ancient Rome: citizens and slaves. If you were a slave – or a gladiator, condemned to die – you were absolutely sub-human, existing solely for the pleasure of the citizens, with no rights or dignity whatsoever.

In one scene in the second episode, surely to be one of the series’ most talked-about, Batiatus (the owner of a gladiator school, played by Four Wedding and Funeral gay guy John Hannah) is having a conversation with his wife Lucretia (played Xena herself, Lucy Lawless). Meanwhile, both are being nonchalantly sexually serviced by slaves.

The dehumanization is shocking, but fascinating. The show could easily have dumbed down this aspect of the show – ignoring any sense of “real” Roman history and made it strictly about the sex and gore. They didn’t, and I found these elements to be the most interesting part of the series.

(Some critics have said, “It’s impossible for modern people to understand the Roman mind-set,” but given the way we treat the poor in other countries, and even our own country, I don’t think the “Roman” mind-set is quite as alien as some of us would like to believe. I think we simply keep our “slaves” hidden far from view.)

Also in keeping with the "history" of the show, Spartacus includes wonderfully matter-of-fact gay characters, including the gladiator Barca, and while we do see a pretty explicit scene of gay sex, he doesn’t have much to do in at least the first four episodes of the show made available for preview by the network.

Next Page! Who's the hottest gladiator of them all?