If you enjoyed ‘Rome’ but found it a bit heavy on the intellectualism and a bit short on the stabbing and nudity, then… well, you should probably give TV a swerve altogether and just focus on “specialist video titles”. Failing that, ‘Spartacus’ might just be the series for you. In the first show alone, there’s enough fake blood to put the makers of the ‘Saw’ franchise off their lunch and the producers clearly feel that ten minutes without seeing a lady in the nip is about nine minutes too many.

Spartacus is a Thracian deputised by Rome to fight some Barbarians, but it all goes south: before he knows it, Mrs Spartacus has been carried off by the hated Romans, and Spartacus has been sold into slavery as a gladiator. There is a very hard-to-call Worst Acting face-off between an aristocratic, idle nincompoop played by an actress seriously called Viva Bianca, and The Toughest Kid In Gladiator School, played by Manu Bennett, who looks not dissimilar to Jean Claude Van Damme (but makes the Muscles From Brussels look like Marlon fricking Brando). Sparty himself is played with gritted, pouting rage by Andy Whitfield. He’s not bad, but never mind what he’s saying, just look at that torso as he fillets yet another enemy. Phwoar. Dumb, dumb fun.