>Sorry about the spoilers. I should have thought about the show airing in other countries on a different schedule. The same thing happened to me, in reverse, with "Spooks" (which aired in the U.S. as "MI-5"). Someone blew the whole third season for me. Then again, the third season pretty much blew in itself.

The difference between US and GB "action" TV is that we don't portray our heroes as super-human, able to fight and beat everyone, driving a car through a multi-storey car-park window, but it lands conveniently on a down-sloping ramp, showuing no fear when captured, etc. Thus it may seem a bit tame to you guys.

Take CSI, for instance, which I've mentioned before. They are omniscient scientists, able to analyse ANYTHING from DNA to knowing that that tiny fleck of blue is from a certain plastic used only in speed boats, detect the evidence in the first place, investigate and arrest the culprit, AND be the first through the door in a bust. In England that would be 4 jobs, and the scientist who analyses DNA would probably do just that.

>
>Yes, I remember the graffiti. That was Atia it referred to. Now there is one red-hot Roman mama!
>

But I read that she in reality was quite chaste and virtuous

Of course, I'd guessed that Octavius was the future emperor. Incidentally, I noticed that JC's toadies called him "imperator" and I thought, hang on, he hasn't been made emperor yet. So I looked it up and it means "commander of an army, esp. victorious", so I guess the term really did start with him, in that he was the first dictator, who happened to be an imperator, and it went on to mean "king of many nations", just as his surname became synonymous with such.

Does seem strange to me hearing the two main men speak, the centurian/consul and the legionnaire, a Scot and a big daft Welshman :-)