Season 1 – Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston

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scott D @CatoPublius 4d I was really looking forward to this. I love history, love documentaries (and good recreations) and I like Tom Hiddleston. This was so bad right out of the gate, I am having a hard time getting my head around it. Hiddleston makes it seem this is a very personal exploration for him - but then they do all this cheesy CGI magic-hand-waving, freeze-framing scholars while talking to them, and absolutely stupid dialogue comedy written for Hiddleston and the scholars. That's not a documentary. That's a puppet show. No thanks. I knew how bad it was going to get when I saw the new British penchant for throwing black actors into ahistorical settings without explanation - as if it were perfectly natural to have a black London/Nigerian playing a Roman blacksmith in 1st century Pompeii. Count me out. Explains why the critics are falling all over it. It's garbage. Skip it. Try "Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town" (BBC, 2010). Or Pompeii: The New Dig (BBC/PBS Secrets of the Dead 2024) See more Chantelle C @RT44219268 5d Love learning about Pompeii, love documentaries but this is extremely difficult to watch. Constant pausing and "rewinding", overacting and a lot of speculation. Really disappointed with the result as the concept is great. See more Mimi D @RT16698271 5d Tom did such a wonderful job bringing to life such a tragedy. I cried through a lot of it. See more Michael D @MichaelX Aug 27 One of the greatest trips I have taken was to the Amalfi Coast for the wedding of two friends, capped by a day trip to Pompeii, long on my bucket lists. Our guide Theresa was extraordinary, and the experience left an indelible mark. Since then, anything Pompeii-related gets watched immediately. This three-part National Geographic docuseries, hosted by the charming and knowledgeable Tom Hiddleston, takes a fresh angle: rather than cataloguing the dead, it investigates who might have survived. Following three individuals including a teenage bronzesmith apprentice, a bathhouse-owning businesswoman, and an unnamed Praetorian guard, Hiddleston traces their names through the archaeological record across the Roman world post-eruption. It’s a valiant and often thrilling conceit, though the dramatic reconstructions occasionally tip into the overwrought. Still, that frisson of excitement watching ancient Pompeii spring back to life never dims. This is worth your time on Disney+. See more Ivan F @Neogrey Aug 22 It's a relatively big budget production with really educated VFX, set design, props and costume design. The drama part where Hiddleston is speculating on who these people were and what their motives were goes quite cheesy. I understand that he was quite invested as a youngster in everything about Pompeii and the roman empire, but all this dramatic stage performance was a bit too much for me. See more Kay M @Kay1197 Aug 19 Slogging through. That was Hiddleston while speaking slowly, as he looks often directly into the camera reciting scripted text to impart how seriously or emotionally he takes the subject. I was embarrassed for him playing his part affectatiously. He should have fought harder for more genuine speech. Also as a note, the intro to the series kept being repeated throughout each episode = irritating. His little flip of the fingers thing also provoked me. I and others have never seen that before. It also was affectatious and not clever. As someone else said, I expected more information and a less rehearsed manifestation of sorrow and seriousness. I was extremely bothered in the third episode (and this isn't really a spoiler at all) by almost exactly this quote, "What's the point of surviving if you have to be alone." I think about the unaccompanied minors in the U.S. right now facing deportation without attorneys in immigration court. The point of surviving is SURVIVAL and a future. See more Read all reviews

Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston — Season 1

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