I guess the corruption in Pompeii has gotten out of hand, and that leads to the 79 A. D. eruption of Vesuvius. It's taken us four and a half hours of the five and a half hour miniseries to get there, and while the sets are stunning, a lot that comes before is convoluted, confusing and most importantly, boring. What is memorable or unintentional funny scenes, particularly Ned Beatty's bellowing and the darkness of Franco Nero's character who is downright evil. The main stories surrounding all the corruption and scheming and the ultimate eruption drags this along, although every now and then Brian Blessed comes along to give the viewer some theatrical thrills and remind them that he once played Rome's first emperor, Augustus. Like "I Claudius", these later Romans enjoy the games, anise while an argument is going on in public over the games 17 minutes into this part that you finally get to see Vesuvius in the background smoking and shaking the earth. The potential of Pompeii turning into Sodom and Gomorrah several thousand years after that biblical disaster becomes a motivation for sticking through the rest.
It's here that the miniseries finally starts to gain some excitement, because you know the eruption is inevitable. But there is still a lot of slow stuff along the way, far less passionate than the great biblical epics of the 50's and 60's, even some of the bombs simply because it lacks in happiness outside of the few elements that I've mentioned. Laurence Olivier and Siobhan McKenna are a grand couple in the scale of Blessed and Sian Phillips in "I Claudius", but the bulk of the film really lacks passion outside of some of the Beefcake shown with the Gladiator scenes. They really went out of their way to find the most muscley men since the days of the Peplum films are the fifties and sixties.
There is indeed a whole lot of shaking going on in the last half-hour, and when you finally get a good view of Vesuvius with the landscape in between Pompeii and the mountain, you really get the impact of how big it is. It's amazing that the still active volcano hasn't erupted in nearly 80 years. But if you can make it through the first five hours for the last half-hour out of all of this well done disaster footage, you are in for a treat. Otherwise, this is one of the most overproduced, underdeveloped miniseries ever, and perhaps a reason why that genre on network television ceased to exist for the most part until pay channels took over and began producing quality miniseries in the beginning of the millennium.
It's here that the miniseries finally starts to gain some excitement, because you know the eruption is inevitable. But there is still a lot of slow stuff along the way, far less passionate than the great biblical epics of the 50's and 60's, even some of the bombs simply because it lacks in happiness outside of the few elements that I've mentioned. Laurence Olivier and Siobhan McKenna are a grand couple in the scale of Blessed and Sian Phillips in "I Claudius", but the bulk of the film really lacks passion outside of some of the Beefcake shown with the Gladiator scenes. They really went out of their way to find the most muscley men since the days of the Peplum films are the fifties and sixties.
There is indeed a whole lot of shaking going on in the last half-hour, and when you finally get a good view of Vesuvius with the landscape in between Pompeii and the mountain, you really get the impact of how big it is. It's amazing that the still active volcano hasn't erupted in nearly 80 years. But if you can make it through the first five hours for the last half-hour out of all of this well done disaster footage, you are in for a treat. Otherwise, this is one of the most overproduced, underdeveloped miniseries ever, and perhaps a reason why that genre on network television ceased to exist for the most part until pay channels took over and began producing quality miniseries in the beginning of the millennium.
