Domina Review: The Fall (Season 1 Episode 1)

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that our media landscape doesn’t feature nearly enough historical dramas that aren’t Regency or Edwardian costume sagas set in England. Every few years we get a Hell on Wheels or a Vikings that explores places and time periods outside of that standard, but they’re few and far between. And they almost always exclusively focus on men.

Well, Epix’s latest historical epic is here to change all that. And Domina Season 1 Episode 1, “The Fall,” may spend an awful lot of time on set-up, but its willingness to push boundaries and unabashedly feminist framing are reason enough to tune in next week.

But, let’s be clear: Domina is not a show like HBO’s Rome, the last historical drama that tried to tackle life in the early days of the Eternal City. This isn’t a prestige series with a massive production budget or any particular desire to cleave to something as nebulous as historical accuracy. At least most of these characters did, in fact, exist as real people, though in perhaps less directly soapy forms.

Domina ostensibly follows the story of Livia Drusilla, who will ultimately one day become the first Empress of Rome. The future wife of Octavian, she is also the mother of the emperor Tiberius, grandmother of the emperor Caligula, great-grandmother of the emperor Claudius, and the great-great-grandmother of the emperor Nero.

She is, literally and figuratively woven throughout the fabric of the history of the Roman Empire. Yet she’s also a figure few people could even name.

As “The Fall” begins, that day is a long way off. Julius Caesar has been assassinated by the Senate and Roman power is coalescing into two factions: Those that want to see the Roman Republic continue, with the Senate at its head (Brutus, Cassius, and the others involved in Caesar’s death) and those who want to see his murder avenged and his successor assume command (Gaius Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, etc.)

Domina opens with Livia’s wedding to Tiberius Claudius Nero, a man of her father’s political faction who seems nondescript and selfish in virtually every way. He’s almost instantaneously unlikeable, which is probably because Livia will eventually divorce him and it’s easier if no one is going to be terribly sad about that fact.

Perhaps having Nero abandon his wife to a gang of highway bandits and rapists while they’re on the run from Octavian’s forces and then murder her best friend is a bit much, but, still.

This first episode of Domina contains loads of drama: A wedding, several affairs, multiple violent murders, a suicide, a civil war, and more. All of this is necessary to tick the boxes of history – Livia must marry Nero before she can marry Octavian, she must have a son and flee Rome, her father must die at the Battle of Phillippi, Octavian must forge an uneasy peace in blood with Marc Antony. (For now. Spoiler alert: They’ll go to war with each other later.)

The events of “The Fall” span at least three years in real time and, as a result, the hour often feels a bit overstuffed with exposition as the show is forced to try to introduce a dozen influential characters and explain their relationships to one another all while pushing the larger story forward.

It’s a lot to take in.

Thankfully, Domina is grounded in Nadia Parkes’ fierce performance as a young Livia Drusilla, a woman who may be sheltered but who knows her own mind, having been not only educated by her father but raised to see herself as someone every bit as strong and capable as the men around her.

As far as heroines go, she’s remarkably easy to root for and her decision to flee Rome with her worthless (but not as worthless as he will become husband) is grounded in the morality that her father taught her.

True, it might have gone easier for both her and Antigone had she stayed behind and let Nero flee without her. But it would have been un-Roman, and it should be obvious to all by now how unlikely that choice would be for her.

I’ll be truly sorry to see Parkes replaced by Kasia Smutniak when Livia inevitably ages up in an episode or two. She’s a talented find.

Elsewhere, young Gaius Julius Caesar — not a boy, not yet an emperor — is part boy band frontman, part tactical genius, willing to do what he must to avenge his uncle and unburdened by messy things like “a moral compass”.

Domina does its best to plant seeds for his lifelong obsession with/love for Livia, as well as the myriad ways he will use the women in his life to his advantage (looking at you, Octavia and Scribonia). And it’s easy to see how he’ll get others to follow him.

It’s not clear yet if he’ll grow up to be a man worth following, though. Or whether he’ll be worth of Livia, down the road. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• The downside of having to introduce all these characters so quickly is that many of them basically end up being indistinguishable from one another. Gaius/Octavian stands out because he has to — as well as his blatant disregard for both marriage vows and human life — but the rest of the Roman men feel pretty interchangeable, even if, historically speaking, there’s a pretty big difference between an Agrippa and a Cicero.
• I hope we see Liam Cunningham in some flashbacks or something as the series goes on. He’s too good an actor – and I love his warmth with Parkes – to lose after just a single episode. (Even if it is true that’s when Livius died.)
• I know that Domina is doing its best to convey what a brutal world Ancient Rome actually was, but one day I wish we could figure out how to do that on television without threatening quite so much rape and/or sexual violence.

What did you think of this episode of Domina? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Critic Rating:

User Rating:

 

Domina airs Sundays at 10 pm on Epix.

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

Top 15 Moments from Lucifer Season 5 Part 2