See HBO's "Rome" before it's history

Season 2 of HBO's "Rome" premieres tonight, and if I'd had history lessons like this, I wouldn't have shown up to class drunk so often. The opener's got all the intrigue, violence, drama and engrossing characters that took most of the first season to build up, and judging by the three additional episodes previewed, it just keeps getting better.

So why is HBO killing "Rome" off after just two seasons?

HBO has perfected the art of TV series that play out like great novels, Exhibit A being "The Wire," whose word-of-mouth finally snowballed in its recent fourth season. But for some reason, the same approach hasn't worked as well with "Rome." I didn't need to be a soothsayer spouting Ides-of-March mumbo jumbo to promise friends who were lapsing in the first season, "Stick with it and it'll blow you away." Without exception, it did.

With the show's budget reported at a gargantuan $100 million and viewership of its first-season premiere a fraction of what "The Sopranos" draws — even though The Sops have been running on fumes for a while now — it makes a kind of cold, actuarial sense that HBO announced it's finito at the end of this season. But at the same time, it seems they took note of viewers who may have strayed before the payoffs started happening. Because Sunday's episode kills.

Written by co-creator Bruno Heller and directed by Timothy Van Patten, it takes up immediately where Season 1's finale left off, with the puncture-riddled corpse of Julius Caesar (Ciarán Hinds) lying on the Senate floor. Control of the empire is up for grabs, and the bloodshed isn't over yet. On one side, the people behind the hit: Brutus (Tobias Menzies), his mom and Caesar's lover, Servilia (Lindsay Duncan) and their followers. On the other: Mark Antony (James Purefoy), his lover and Caesar's niece, Atia (Polly Walker), and her precocious son Octavian (Max Pirkis) — named to everyone's surprise as successor in Caesar's will.

As the power struggle shakes out, the lethal rivalry between the slutty and scheming Atia and Servilia makes the dustups between Joan Collins and Linda Evans on "Dynasty" look like a Ginger and Mary Ann pie fight. Likewise, alpha-dog Mark Antony fulminates after an attempt on his own life. "Amnesty?" he answers the clever young Octavian. "I'm going to eat their livers!"

At the center of all of this remain two ordinary ex-soldiers, the stiff, dour Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and brutish bon vivant Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson). If theirs wasn't one of the all-time great TV friendships last season — when Vorenus charged in to save Pullo in a savage gladiator spectacle — then it is now. And the shoe — make that the sandal — is on the other foot.

Vorenus is a broken man. His wife is dead, his children are missing after he cursed them, and he feels responsible for Caesar's death. Soon he moves from broken to scary. This time Pullo's the rock, trying to anchor his increasingly out-of-control friend. The drunken, murdering bear of a man emerges as the heart of "Rome's" second season. And, showing a puppyish side, he's also the comic relief. In the same breath, he apologizes for killing his slave-girl's man and then meekly asks her to marry him. Later, he tries to talk Vorenus down about cursing his kids for lying to him. "You didn't kill an animal on it, did you? There you go, then. The curse isn't sealed."

See? Simple as that.

Knowing the history doesn't spoil anything — although this isn't a problem for most viewers. (A recent Gallup poll showed that 53 percent of Americans don't even know what the first 10 amendments to our own Constitution are called.

So ancient Rome should be wide open.) The death of Caesar at the end of last season was surprisingly affecting — and with no "Et tu, Brute?" And while Octavian clearly succeeded him in real life, how he arrives there involves a good deal more entertaining ugliness, as well as an actor change from Pirkis to the older-looking Simon Woods.

Vorenus and Pullo, by the way, are based on a pair of real Roman centurions who were fierce rivals for promotion but wound up saving each other's lives.

Do you need to watch the previous season to understand what's going on? It would help, and it's as entertaining as homework gets. Put the DVDs on your Netflix list or kill someone and steal them. To keep the numerous characters and their story lines straight, you could also check out the "Rome" page on HBO's site (www.hbo.com).

Last year, "Rome" snagged Emmys for art direction, costumes, visual effects and ... wait for it: hairstyling. That didn't buy a reprieve, though. Taking the show off the air when it's hit its stride will be as much of a dirty shame as HBO's cancellation of "Deadwood," which had become a full-fledged American classic by its third and final season.

(Incidentally: HBO reports there will be a pair of two-hour follow-up "Deadwood" movies after creator David Milch is done with his new series, "John From Cincinnati.")

Failing that, enjoy the empire. While it lasts.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com