Those About to Die; Lady in the Lake

“Those About to Die, a grand 10-part attempt to make ancient Rome as exciting as the fictional histories of Game of Thrones, ends up as a fairly satisfying binge, not raucous enough to be a guilty pleasure but not in enough control of its characters to be seriously good.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Orgiastic grunts and gropes, men-only pile-ins, random lesbian kit-offs: a tick-list of every-which-way sexpottery suggests the intimacy coordinators were the busiest bees on the 230-day shoot. If it’s not sex it’s death. Limbs are never not being lopped, tongues severed, throats sliced. Subtle? Never. Absurd? Always. Fun? Not quite enough.”
Jasper Rees, The Telegraph

“Those About to Die is for people who want the ancient world, where the stakes of sex and violence were far lower than the present day, to give licence to something primal, something carnal, in them. Roland Emmerich doesn’t do subtle, and so Those About to Die is suitably, viscerally, bold.”
Nick Hilton, The Independent

“Those About to Die is no Gladiator but it does get better as it goes on. It’s not an unqualified thumbs up… but I wouldn’t want to see it put to the sword either.”
Neil Armstrong, The i

“The whole endeavour is a dense, clever, impeccably written, acted, shot and scored offering that is designed to be consumed slowly, episode by episode, not binged. You may finish each one feeling slightly battered and exhausted – perhaps more impressed than moved, but that’s OK. Give it a few days to bed in and the love will come.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“The city that emerges is vivid, multilayered and frequently breathtakingly captured. The director Alma Har’el excels at set pieces. There are dream sequences and men in gas masks, discordant strings, seahorses and sheep. If you like the weirdness, great, it gets a whole lot weirder. And if it sometimes feels in the early episodes as though atmosphere wins out over anything more tangible, the twists that come later are worth the wait.”
Alice Jones, The Times

“Lady in the Lake is an Apple TV+ series, which means it screams ‘prestige’: a top-notch star in Natalie Portman, high production values, a lofty tone. But it’s deathly slow, devoid of suspense, and ultimately just a vehicle for Portman to look beautiful in a series of 1960s outfits.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph