Finished the series last night. Once it got over the dreadful but hilarious first episode, the boring second episode and got to the third, which set the standard, it was quite a good series. Not brilliant by any means but it had a lot going for it once it settled down, 7/10. The fight scenes were good and generally avoided being too gory, good and multiple story-lines tending to go on, acting that improved a lot so it wasn't just John Hannah holding the show together. Credit to the writers for being willing to take a brave and unexpected changes, to kill off characters and usually killing them to good effect in terms of story and emotions, lots of intresting twists. I liked a lot of the characters: Batiatus, Lucretia, Crixus, Ashur, Ilithyia, Glaber, Varro, Barca, Naevia, Aurelia, Pietros, Solonius, Titus and his family
The big flaw for me was that I disliked Spartacus. Arrogant, a bit of an idiot, a jerk at times, I didn't find much likeable about him. Wasn't fond of Sura, beyond one flashback. Credit to the rest I guess for making up for that flaw
The series peaked in episode 9, a fantastic episode with an excellent ending that offered so much promise. If it helps, it was the one with the golden masks. Was not going to hit the episode heights again but was awfully disappointed that, after a wonderful twist ending to it, they wasted the potential it gave them. They could have probably finished the series one or two episodes earlier then they did and gone down a different path for awhile, time will tell if they made the right choice. Thought ending episode didn't really get going till late on but once it did, was a good way to end the series, some moments didn't quite click but others were very good
Look forward to the prequel
