Empire

For those who like their historical dramas filled with gore, goring, and gorgies, Empire is an epic disappointment. Clocking in at six hours, this $30 million ancient Roman miniseries wants to be Gladiator, but feels more like a director's cut of Troy—with even more talking. Each hour-long episode painfully tells one part of the story of Octavius (Santiago Cabrera), the nephew and heir of Julius Caesar, and Tyrannus (Jonathan Cake), the fictional freed slave who's assigned to protect him from a murderous Senate. The series opens with promising swordplay between Tyrannus and his fellow gladiators, but quickly marches into over-indulgent terrain littered with sweeping panoramas, stunning vistas, and Spartan acting. Furthermore, it's another two episodes before the swords are drawn and blood starts spilling again. The exception, of course, is the murder of Julius Caesar, which is treated with little fanfare or visible suffering. Though Cake manages to hold the production together with his stoic performance as Octavius' mentor, the rest of Empire degenerates into a Disneyfied history lesson for the HDTV-enabled masses.