Good morning! What's Alan Watching? is predominantly a solo venture, but my great pal — and the great critic — Maureen Ryan asked if I had any interest in publishing her review of Spartacus: House of Ashur, a spinoff of the early 2010s Starz drama Spartacus. That one's always been a big blind spot for me, and because of Mo's passion for the franchise, this seemed like a nice piece of bonus content for all subscribers, free and paid both. If you like this and want to read more of Mo's work, here's her own site.
She's also hard at work on a Battlestar Galactica book that I am going to read the hell out of. Onto Mo's review, and I'll be back Friday morning with my latest Pluribus recap and the traditional Friday newsletter.
Spartacus is the ultimate “two things can be true” entity.
Spartacus, which stormed the TV scene in 2010 and was revived by Starz this year, is full of profanity, orgies and moments engineered to go over the top and keep going. As I explained in various Sparty Down pieces over the years, if you’re a fan of lusty vibes and creative dismemberment, is this ever the show for you. That said, Spartacus is also a cogent exploration of class, power and exclusion, as well as a meditation on different kinds of solidarity and even nobility.
For the past decade and a half, I’ve watched with amusement and a little frustration as some of my colleagues in the media have struggled to admit that these seemingly disparate elements — half-naked characters who scream “Jupiter’s cock!” and who struggle for true liberation — can and do co-exist within the same show. For some critics, the more the drama leans into its operatic side — and it regularly does so quite intentionally — the more it breaks their brains a bit. TV is not supposed to combine these things in this unashamed, gonzo way!
The most extensive full-frontal male nudity in all of TV shouldn’t co-exist with this much perceptive social commentary! A show that adores bloody excess should not contain incisive indictments of imperial overreach! But executive producer and showrunner Steven S. DeKnight loves wild, grand gestures, and he also allows his characters moments of vulnerability, insight and tenderness. Frankly, the extreme ends of the Spartacus scale are just hard for some people to accept.
Eh, their loss.
Spartacus, true to the legacy of the guy who lends his name to the series, simply does not care about the rules. Prestige TV restraint, begone! A meme from Garth’s Marenghi’s Darkplace quotes a character shouting “I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards!” Which kind of gets at what this show is doing.
All that is to say, Spartacus is one of a kind. It is stylized and soapy and smart; it revels in brutality and bloodshed but it cannot be discounted as a cartoon (it actually does employ subtext, sometimes quite deftly). It nimbly avoids being a slog, but it does weigh the cost of the suffering caused by greed and exploitation as it surveys a decaying Rome on the verge of civil war (any resemblances to the times we’re enduring seem entirely intentional). This show is not for everyone, and would that more programs would try for that kind of unashamed distinctiveness. But the drama is for anyone willing to understand that Spartacus absolutely knows what it’s going for and why.
House of Ashur, which arrives on Starz Dec. 5, sticks to what worked about DeKnight’s previous incarnations of Spartacus. The drama keeps things moving briskly, but House of Ashur is a bit more pragmatic and modulated in the early going. Nick E. Tarabay returns as the wily Ashur, whom fans will recall as a slave who acted as a fixer in earlier seasons of the show. Through a divine (and delightful) machination, the character gets to find out what would happen in an alternate reality in which he not only lived a different life, but, for his services to Rome, inherited the gladiator academy of his former master, Batiatus (RIP).
Ashur is a driven, street-smart character, and given the chance to bring more sides of him to life, Tarabay takes passionate advantage of the opportunity. Ashur does not believe in the gods, or in other human beings, truth be told. He believes in what he can grab with his own hands, and the actor brings engaged intensity and precise focus to every scene. Everyone underestimates Ashur, which he takes as a challenge; it’s fuel for his relentless fire. But Tarabay also deftly handles many small comedic moments (him saying to an obnoxious rich guy, through gritted teeth, “Your will, my hands,” is a delight).
Thing is, aside from his faithful slave Hilara (Jamaica Vaughan), few care about whether Ashur’s quest for success prospers, and the title character’s isolation works against deeper emotional investment in the season’s early episodes. All in all, the attempts at romance for various characters, including Ashur, are hit or miss in the first half of the season (aside from the chemistry-infused relationship the gruff Doctore embarks on).
When we first met Batiatus 15 years ago, viewers understood he was a schemer capable of cruelty and deceit, but we didn’t know his full history or potential. He and his wife Lucretia were a pair of entertaining clean slates (well, those social climbers were far from “clean,” but you get the idea). However low they went in their quest for status, their love for each other was never in doubt, and combined with John Hannah and Lucy Lawless’ terrific performances, that sturdy bond made the couple’s striving relatively sympathetic.
But fans of the drama know quite a bit more about the guarded Ashur, a lone wolf who frequently prioritized saving his own skin above all else. Thus for House of Ashur, there’s a higher bar to clear when it comes investing more deeply in the title character’s quest. While House of Ashur lays out a set of conflicts and aspirations with typical energy in the early episodes, it takes a while for the drama to build up sympathy for Ashur’s travails.
House of Ashur vaults that barrier spectacularly in the fifth episode.
Around then, the snooty patrician Julius Caesar arrives in Capua with his mean-girl wife, Cornelia, who swans around as if she’s the star of the Real Housewives of Rome (complimentary). Many characters are given rich material on Spartacus, and Jackson Gallagher and Jaime Slater are among those who understandably make a meal of it; the couple is delightfully hateable.
Given how deliciously rude and condescending they are, their mid-season arrival gives Team Ashur juicy antagonists to unite against, and the whole narrative kicks into a higher gear. Another standout is the subversive and smart season premiere, which features a new character played with ragged, raw fire by Tenika Davis.
Capua is not Rome, and Ashur not only used to be a slave, he’s Syrian. And despite the fact that Rome is the capital of a vast, varied empire, its upper crust gatekeeps outsiders aggressively. Senators, gladiator owners and members of the local gentry remind Ashur of his lowly, unproven status at every opportunity.
As the series opens, he’s barely able to grab slots for his fighters at a rickety local arena. Ashur’s household has a lot of mouths to feed, and without a few wins, his time as a free man could be over almost as soon as it began. Tarabay does an excellent job of portraying Ashur’s desperate ambition; he knows the odds are stacked against him, and the energy and skill the actor brings to his character’s machinations — and moments of quiet consideration — are considerable.
As the narrative builds momentum, Graham McTavish and Claudia Black offer stellar turns as, respectively, Ashur’s Doctore — the man who trains the fighters — and as Cossutia, a local worthy who can’t stand Ashur but can’t avoid him as she makes her way up Capua’s social ladder. Both actors absolutely understand the assignment, and traverse the tonal shifts — the social highs and the arena lows — with ease. They’re terrific.
It takes a while for the gladiators on the sands to become memorable; few stand out the way Gannicus, Varro, Crixus or the Bringer of Rain did in earlier seasons (but that’s partly OG Spartacus nostalgia talking). That said, the fights in the arenas are as well-crafted and wild as any in the show’s past. You do not have to worry that anyone on the Spartacus team forgot how to creatively separate fighters from various body parts.
For years, I’ve been yelling to anyone who’d listen (and some who wouldn’t) that Spartacus portrays many kinds of sexuality without being leering or creepy, partly because the show gives real dignity to the desires of its characters, queer and straight, high-born or low. It is not averse to orgies, but it doesn’t only offer fall-of-Rome sensual decadence. All kinds of romantic and sexual situations play out on the show — which also, by the way, consistently takes note of when a person’s consent is present (or disregarded). I’ll yell it again: On all these fronts, the Spartacus TV franchise has usually been much smarter than many very famous dramas.
But that ongoing examination of consent and autonomy makes sense, when you think about it. Spartacus’ political framework has always been informed by questions that remain all too relevant in the real world: What if some people decided to treat other human beings as objects, as possessions? What if a whole empire was founded on that kind of ruthless self-interest and brutal exploitation? What does that do not just to the oppressed, but the oppressor? What seeds of revolution spring from systemic acts of injustice?
Though the first half of House of Ashur does not show anyone planning for the end of enslavement or the overthrow of Rome itself — cherished goals in earlier seasons — the new seasons does not lose sight of these core questions. Another examination of autonomy and liberation that gleefully engages in bloody action, sweaty sensuality and devious machinations? All I can say is: Gratitude.
Spartacus: House of Ashur debuts with two episodes Friday, Dec. 5 on Starz; new episodes arrive weekly on Fridays (prior seasons are available on Starz and Netflix US). Mo has seen five of ten episodes.