Review: "Spartacus: Gods of the Arena" is Even Grittier Than Season One (Even if it Starts a Little Slow)

Warning: This review contains minor spoilers for the first episode of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.

Peter Mensah as Oenomaus

Truthfully, I was a tad disappointed in the first episode of Starz' new six-episode "prequel" series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena. While it includes some pretty rousing action, some appealing new faces, and some very steamy and eyebrow-raising sex scenes, it also gets rather talky in parts, and by the end of the first episode, the series' central conflict is still a little undefined.

Then again, I was disappointed by the first episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and that ended up being my single favorite TV show of 2010, so the "success" of this first episode may not matter much – and it may look a lot better in retrospect, once the over-arching story is more clearly understood. And given this is a story with so many moving pieces, maybe an exposition-heavy opening is inevitable.

The series, the first episode of which was made available for preview by Starz, begins where the first season left off: a brief recap of some of the most significant (and literally the most violent!) events of Blood and Sand, which we soon realize is Batiatus’ life flashing before his eyes as he lay dying at the end of that season.

But then, in a gleam in his eye, we're transported backward into an even more-distant past, when Batiatus' fortunes as an owner of a school for gladiators had not yet begun to rise. We're also immediately shown a scene of almost unimaginable violence – an early hint that this season will be even grittier and more graphic than the one that came before.

It’s all cleverly set up, but things meander a bit as we're re-introduced to familiar characters – Doctore, Crixus, Naevia – who are all in very different situations than their Blood and Sand incarnations. Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), for example, declares, "I've never been with any man [sexually] but my husband," saying firmly that the idea of having sex even with the hunky gladiators, who are in fact slaves, is disgusting to her.

Jaime Murray as Gaia and Lucy Lawless as Lucretia

We know that's going to change soon enough.

We also meet some interesting new characters, including Gaia (Dexter's Jaime Murray), rising gladiator-star (and major hunk) Gannicus (Dustin Clare). We don't see much of gay gladiator Barca or his new love interest Auctus (Josef Brown) in the first episode, but rest assured, they'll be more heavily featured in future episodes (and AfterElton.com has learned that they'll also have a gay sex scene together in either episode two or three).

As in Blood and Sand, there's lots of boasts and insults about “cocks” both large and small (and firm and soft), but the series seems to be taking a decidedly more graphic approach to its subject matter.

We see a scene at a Roman toilet, which is both shocking and fascinating from a historical perspective, and there's much more of the show's trademark blending of sex and violence, emphasizing the brutality and perversity of the Roman empire. At one point, Batiatus is humiliated by a rival who has his men hold him down so he can piss on him.

Indeed, a major theme of Blood and Sand was that the unimaginable violence of the Roman gladiator ring and the slave trade was also mirrored in the brutal way the citizens themselves treated each other as they jockeyed for social status. We see early on how important it is to Batiatus that he improve his own standing – and hints of the total moral cowardice we already know is in his soul. A gladiator battle in a marketplace – which is all Batiatus' men are worthy of at this point – is remarkable in its rapid shifting of fortunes.