Everything Game of Thrones did, HBO series Rome did better – including not fumbling the finale

A sprawling cast of richly flawed heroes. Epic stakes. Elaborate sets. A family-man hero whose definition of good is skewed by the cruel world he lives in. Animated opening titles with a catchy theme song. Blood, guts, sex and a bit of incest: everything Game of Thrones did, Rome did better. Rome was one of the most expensive TV shows ever made when it launched in 2005; its two-season run was shot on a massive, immersive outdoor recreation of the ancient city in Italy’s famous Cinecittà studios, and spared no expense on costumes, props or fake blood. When it came out half a decade later, Game of Thrones would follow in Rome’s footsteps with its puzzle wheel of plotting across factions and alliances, shocking betrayals and Shakespearean dialogue punctuated with c-bombs. Though Thrones had its labyrinthine source material in George RR Martin’s books, and England’s 15th century Wars of the Roses, both shows made their tangled civil wars into compelling TV by grounding them in human decisions and weaknesses. Thrones also hired multiple Rome directors, including Tim Van Patten, who saved Thrones from an early death by almost completely reshooting the show’s disastrous original first episode. Beginning with the dissolution of the first triumvirate and Julius Caesar’s seizure of power, Rome chronicles an empire at its peak and the people who sought to rule it. Big hitters of history like Julius Caesar (Ciarán Hinds), Mark Antony (James Purefoy), Brutus (Tobias Menzies) and Cleopatra (Lyndsey Marshal) are written as ambitious, power-hungry and unflinchingly flawed characters; Antony is particularly compelling as a brawling hedonist who prefers a political hatchet to Caesar’s scalpel. His other half, Polly Walker’s Attia, schemes and manipulates her way from well-off widow to mother of the Emperor, and has a lot more fun doing it than Cersei Lannister. But Rome’s greatest strength is something Thrones never had: normal people. In the midst of this historical epic, the sho…