Many roads lead to ancient Rome.

Television has gotten so bad that with a few exceptions, like Boardwalk and Revenge,and Mad Men, the most entertaining dramatic series of the week is Alfred Hitchcock Presents from the 1960s: hour-long black and white mysteries with real actors in real stories with real plots—and no commercials since they are on Encore. I'm sure there are other series that are on that are of some value, but I won't find them because I refuse to sit through ten minutes of show followed by 5-8 minutes of commercials. Anyway this week I found the perfect example of the quality television of the past and the crap they pawn off as entertainment today: Spartacus versus I, Claudius. True I,Claudius was a limited series based on two classic novels by Robert Graves I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935) while Spartacus, is an open-ended series loosely based on Spartacus a gladiator and escaped slave in ancient Rome who led the Third Servile War in 73 BC. But while IC was brilliantly written, deftly plotted and actually had well-defined characters, it clearly was written for an adult audience. One anticipated each new chapter because you never knew what would happen next. Spartacus, on the other hand, is a series of short scenes followed by incredibly bloody slaughters, cliched characters, laughable pseudo-classical dialog, lot of nudity and was obviously written for bloodthirsty pre-teens who also wanted see "titties" or a gay audience since it is the first show I know of to show so much frontal male nudity. (Apparently in ancient Rome every man, including slaves had fabulous bodies with great pecs. Yet despite the city's many baths they were always dirty and sweaty.) Despite each show's different chapter name, I suspect it's, in essence, the same show every week. Now I am a person who completely approves of porn, which is basically what this show is, however soft. But there are lots of porn sites on the Internet so I really wish somebody would write a tv series for grownup with scenes that last longer than 30 seconds. But until then I will content myself with Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Not that I don't wish Spartacus enormous success. I do. If only because it will drive Santorum insane to know that this much nudity and sex is being shown for almost an hour every week.