HBO's new 12-episode series, Rome, launches this Sunday, August 28, at 9/8c.

http://www.hbo.com/rome/

With the demise of Six Feet Under (*sniff*) and Sex and the City, The Sopranos nearing its close (well, sorta), and Entourage, Deadwood, and The Wire garnering only marginally satisfactory numbers, HBO is jockeying for its new tentpole series, and it appears that Rome, the most expensive TV series ever produced ($100 million), may be HBO's savior.

Or maybe not.

Newsweek raved. Called it (from what I remember) lavish and expertly acted. The New York Times, though, criticized its lack of psychological implications, those that define HBO's other dramatic series.

So who's watching?

I'll definitely give it a go, especially since it's being recapped by TWoP. Also glad that finally The Movie Network is showing an HBO show at the same time as HBO. No stupid delay for me!

I'm wondering about the show's chances at succes, ratings-wise, though.

Could be a big hit (lots of marketing so far), but it could also be a huge bust, which would be kind of sad.

We'll see.

I am very interested in this. I hope my satellite picks it up.

The previews showed some awesome high scale battle scenes and the gladiator fights. Its looks very bloody too

I love Roman history, so I'll definitely be watching it. But I don't expect it to attract a very large audience for HBO, at least not a Sopranos sized one. Reviews seemed to be good, but not great, at this point.

Premiere in an hour.

I'm Tivo-ing, so thoughts tomorrow.

Dissapointing pilot episode,ill give it a couple of more chances.

Yeah I agree about that. It wasnt bad but it could of been better and Ill still give it a chance. Not enough battles and so far none of the characters are appealing or likable

From what I undersotod of reading about it, it is a soap opera mainly, lots of backstabbing and plotting. I don't have HBO though so am curious to hear you guys' take on it.

Ok first episode. Not nearly what I expected for a BBC/HBO coproduction.

The show cost around 100m to make, it did about 3.8m viewers first episode. Did ok, biggest premiere since Six Feet Under's 4th season.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u ... /rome_dc_2

That's solid for HBO but most definitely not what they needed in lieu of the recent 'we need another Sopranos' alerts.

I still haven't watched the premiere, but I'll get around to it.

HBO is lacking thats the problem, they cant expect Sopranos big when the shows arent THAT good. I mean you got a few solid shows like Entourage, but nothing that will have mass appeal like Sopranos does. They really need to get something big going on and a show about ancient Rome isnt the kind of show people really wanna watch.

I finally got the first episode ON DEMAND.

It seemed visually beautiful, but the story line is all..bleh bleh. Been there done that, sleep with him, kill that guy.

Nothing that really grabbed my attention. Ill give it another shot though.

awesome show. Plenty of public fornication=ratings success

Finally got around to watching the pilot, and I must say, I liked it a bit more than I thought I would.

First of all, the thing is gorgeous; it looks like a movie.

The characters are a little predictable, but it's still pretty interesting. And I don't know a lot about this period of Roman history (I studied Shakespeare's Julius Caesar), but so far, the show is neither too convoluted nor too simplistic.

Looks like I've got yet another show to watch.

And if you weren't aware, HBO just ok'd a second season: http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_ma ... 7C,00.html

Anyone still watching?

Like I said, I was impressed with the pilot, but I thought episode two was pretty bad. Purrrrdy bad.

Don't know if I'll keep going through the whole season. Depends on what I think of the next couple episodes.

The show started off slow during its season premiere but has vastly improved with each episode. Titus and Lucius are becoming the funniest duo on a drama series. I especially love Lucius' facial expressions especially when he was told to penetrate Cleopatra and the fact that he knows that Caesar's newborn with Cleopatra was actually Titus' kid

I think season finale is in 2 more episodes. Hopefully they wont cut down the screen time for Titus Polluck and Lucius Vorenez next season since they are such a great team. It was awesome how Titus manhandled everyone at the arena

Im not sure if im watching the same show?
I watched about 20 minutes of it on BBC [my mother watches it] and the first thing that struck me was how cheap and tacky It looked.

I'm totally shocked to find that it cost $100m.
Its no "Gladiator" thats for sure.

What Ahmad said

It took a few episodes to finally enjoy theshow. The first 4 episodes were pretty much boring aside from the battle against the Gauls in the first episode. The show takes an interesting turn once Pompeii gets assasinated

Well you know, for a bloody expensive serial like Rome you'd expect to be wowed by every episode.