The Stage

BBC Rome epic will return for at least two more series

Published Monday 17 October 2005 at 15:20 by Liz Thomas

BBC’s epic drama Rome, which will be broadcast on BBC2 from November 2, is to become a returning series with at least two further runs in the pipeline.

The 12-episode production, which has been made with US broadcaster HBO and is currently on screens over there, has already been recommissioned by BBC2 controller Roly Keating and head of drama Jane Tranter before it has even been seen by UK audiences.

The first series follows life 400 years after the founding of the Roman Republic and ends with a high-profile assassination. However, creator Bruno Heller has said the second run will continue with the seeds of the struggle between Octavian and Marc Anthony. He said: “Potentially there is five years worth to get to audiences.”

Heller added that he would like to cover the entire period between the fall of the Roman Republic through to the heyday of the empire, which could mean that there will be a third series. The first series cost $110,000 million [£63 million] to make, with HBO bearing the brunt of the expense. Tranter said the BBC invested £9.6 million in the show.

Starring Ciaran Hinds as Julius Caesar, James Purefoy as Marc Anthony and Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson as soldiers and unlikely friends, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, the series is graphically violent and sexually explicit from the outset.

The production, the Corporation’s most costly drama to date, is bound to stir up controversy with scenes of a sexual nature and full frontal nudity just minutes in from its 9pm watershed start. However Tranter defended the scenes and said that all sexual scenes were not gratuitous but intrinsic to the plot. She added that the programme was an authentic portrayal of the time and would come with warnings about its nature.