Eight Days That Made Rome, Channel 5

As empires go, Rome is the big one. So when Channel 5 commissioned October Films to make an eight-part series about this great civilisation, we knew we had a fantastic opportunity to do something bold, informative and dramatic.

Our first challenge was to pick eight days that the production team, our presenter Bettany Hughes and C5 could all enthusiastically get behind.

It was not a quick process, nor one that lacked robust points of view, but it was useful for clarifying our thoughts about what this series was going to be and what it would look like.

The concept we’d pitched – eight hours of presenter-led drama-documentary, each one focusing on a single day in the distant past – threw up a host of questions and challenges.

Did our eight days need to reflect the chronological span of the Roman Empire? (Answer: to some extent.) 

Were we looking for the eight most important days in Roman history? (No – this would lean too heavily towards politics and warfare.)

Should we be looking for days that were significant, but that also gave us a great window into important, broader themes in Roman history? (Yes.)

To take one example, the Spartacus revolt became our route into the broader topic of slavery, which underpinned the Roman economy for almost a millennium. Meanwhile, through the story of Boudicca, we explore what Rome looked like from the outside (violent, rapacious and hyper-aggressive, for the most part).

We whittled our list down to 20, then 10, then back up to 15, and finally to eight.

We certainly don’t expect everyone to agree with our final selection, and it will be fascinating if people come up with alternative lists, but we feel that our final eight all have the crucial ingredients: a dramatic story, historical significance, often unpredictable outcomes and something important and significant to tell us about the complexities of the Romans.

We were fortunate to have a team of producers and researchers with a very impressive, collective CV of high-end TV experience, a huge amount of enthusiasm and knowledge of the classical world.

One had written a thesis on the Roman economy, another could read Ancient Greek – perfectly useless for this production, but good to know it was there if needed.

With presenter Bettany Hughes leading the way, we then began scouring archaeology journals for new discoveries and theories about the Roman world, to ensure this series offered genuine, fresh insight as well as compelling storytelling.

Production concerns

Presenter-led documentary and drama is a daring mix that we approached with some wariness. The obvious concern is a jarring shift in tone moving between each element.

For us, the trick was simply to focus on the fundamentals of good drama: scenes that stem from conflict, that drive plot, serve a purpose and that illuminate some vital aspect of character. Plus, of course, using a superb array of writers to help us with scripts, and the hugely talented cast and crew.

Rome is not the easiest city in which to shoot a huge number of pieces to camera. There’s an old military adage that ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’; and as every producer knows, no schedule survives contact with reality.

Heat, tourists, trams and the endless cavalcade of mopeds made for a tough environment for presenter and crew, particularly the sound department. One of our three trips to Rome ran into the full blast of a heatwave, with temperatures reaching 45°C.

Through these and other adversities, Bettany soldiered on with tireless professionalism and charm. She was the production team’s secret weapon – her ability to hit her marks and nail delivery on the first and every take helped to make up time when, for instance, a wedding reception started up next to where we were just about to shoot a piece to camera, or we were shooed off location by angry nuns.

Eight Days That Made Rome is a series that we’re very proud of. It was a lot of fun to make, thanks to an expert but friendly and collaborative atmosphere. We hope the audience will be given a new insight into the ancient world and will get a much better idea of what the Romans did (and didn’t do) for us.