It seems that the new trend for television series is to have short seasons, averaging 12 to 13 episodes per season, rather than the normal 20 to 23. Since incidences of this trend correlates strongly with the quality of the series, this is something that I very much approve of. The latest example of this that both my wife and I enjoyed is Spartacus: Blood & Sand, and boy, has it been a wild ride.

As usual, I first read about the series on QT3. The initial buzz was quite poor however and after I learned that the people who worked on it were also some of the same people who were responsible for Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, I sort of lost interest. But then a weird thing happened. Usually shows get hyped up and then interest levels off after a while. Instead, Spartacus premiered as a bit of a damp squib, but then garnered more and more critical acclaim.

The first episode was indeed as bad as advertised. It’s best described as Zach Synder’s 300 done on the cheap. It was way too obvious that everything was shot against a green screen. Plus the setup, hero gets separated from his lady love and vows to get her back, threatened to be generic and uninteresting. True, it has some action and nudity, but without context and without being able to sympathize much with the characters, it’s hard to actually get excited over it.

But then it actually does get better. They manage to tone down the overdramatic 300 lighting and poses while keeping the violence excessively gory and the characters, both men and women, gloriously naked. The fight choreography improves over time. The fountain fight in one of the last episodes is just fantastic entertainment. And it turns out that the writers do have a clue about where their story is going and what their characters are all about. Evil Machiavellian machinations abound as once again we learn why Roman politics and intrigue go hand in hand. It’s certainly impossible to get bored of the show.

The most satisfying thing about this show is that it always delivers what it promises. Lesser shows tease the viewer but then cop out when push comes to shove or else makes the viewer wait so long for the payoff that all dramatic tension is gone. In this show, when the title character swears he’ll kill them all, that’s exactly what he does and then some and that’s true for every single episode. I’m particularly impressed that the producers packed so much story in just one season. They could easily have strung things out longer and wrung more from the plot to make more episodes. Instead, they chose to deliver pure, concentrated awesomeness.

Granted, this show is not Rome and never will be. It’s not just the budget. Spartacus doesn’t aspire to be much more than cheap and somewhat crass entertainment. Between the over the top violence and the nudity, it’s always going to be a slightly guilty pleasure. But I am amused that for all the artistic license it takes, it is apparently the most historically faithful adaptation of the real-life Spartacus in mainstream entertainment yet. Characters like Batiatus, Crixus and Glaber all have real-life equivalents and the show has inspired me to read up on the actual history.

Finally, just prior to watching this series, my wife and I tried watching Rosy Business, a Hong Kong TVB drama. Mostly it was because it has been many, many years since we last watched any Chinese television shows and my wife was curious about what seems to be one of the most popular and critically acclaimed dramas of 2009. Unfortunately, while it was competent enough in setting up its premise and the first couple of episodes were pretty briskly paced, it soon resorted to the usual tricks of dragging things out for as long as possible and delaying resolution of conflicts to fill more episodes. We gave up after just a handful of episodes.

Now no one would ever expect Spartacus to win any awards, but how sad is it for the Hong Kong television industry and the tastes of the people who actually watch them, that for all the cheap ways the show tries to boost its ratings through violence and sex, Spartacus is still more intelligent and artistically superior compared to the best that Hong Kong has to offer.