Yes, this was real low-brow entertainment, but it was like a train wreck and I couldn't look away. Especially entertaining for gay men because the "gladiators" were real scantily clad eye candy. Dumb as rocks, but quite physically attractive. Their girlfriends accompanied the guys and they did nothing to increase the collective intelligence level. Not as scantily clad as the boys, but I guess the hetero men (and maybe some less discerning lesbians) might be titillated. This was a competition and the girls' tasks were actually more interesting than the guys'. I'll reiterate - this one season series was stupid, but entertaining. (The gladiator trainer, played by David McIntosh, was so intensely beautiful, it hurt my eyes. He was previously a contestant on the equally stupid Love Island.)
5 Reviews
Addictively entertaining chariot-wreck
memeweaver17 August 2022
The detailed 1 star reviews here explain exactly why this show is so watchable. No one is going to confuse Bromans with I Claudius so don't judge them together except as entertainments.
5 years after viewing, Bromans is still our household's benchmark for trashy nonsense.
5 years after viewing, Bromans is still our household's benchmark for trashy nonsense.
Nothing more than an insult to Rome
metalrage66621 June 2018
Warning: Spoilers
That's all I feel whenever I managed to catch an episode of this stupid show, it was little more than an insult to ancient Rome, their culture and everything that ancient Romans had to endure to just get through a single day.
Bromans is a show where 8 couples are transported back in time to live as Romans lived; the guys as gladiators and their girlfriends as dutiful handmaidens and servants to their fighting men. It's a great concept very poorly executed and labelled as reality TV. All 16 contestants don't appear to have a single brain cell among them and whether or not it's staged for the cameras, none of them seem to have any knowledge of Rome and all they know of Caesar is a salad. I'm sure that most, if not all of these contestants, wouldn't be able to even locate Rome on a map. After every challenge, characters playing a Dominus and a Doctore, meet with the Emperor to discuss which contestant is to be banished. Once they are banished they are stripped of their toga and they leave.
In the first episode we're introduced to the would be gladiators and they are advised that as gladiators, they are now considered slaves and they are to act as such, so they are stripped naked and marched into a small coliseum, there they are shackled and made to stand there while their women are brought in wearing gold bikinis to laugh at them before they are given their first test; to find bundles of clothing buried in the ground and clothe their men. Apparently viewers were horrified when one girl ends up with a few scratches from wrestling with another girl when a bag of clothes is found. I still can't work out what we're supposed to be shocked about, if getting scratched was the worst thing a Roman ever faced, it would never have become a world power.
Over the next few weeks we are then subjected to these low-foreheaded tattooed British idiots as they are put through challenge after challenge while the women get to laze around largely doing nothing except bitch and whinge whenever they have to do what Roman women used to do, like wash clothes and crush grapes and be subservient to men. Ironically if any of these women acted and spoke like these tramps do during Roman times, they'd think twice before ever opening their mouths again. The so called gladiators seem to excel in 2 things, making excuses on why they lost a challenge and hurling insults at one another.
However I can look past all the stupidity and faux gladiatorial matches, I can even look past all the half-witted attempts to showcase what actual Roman life was like, but what really got to me was that none of these idiots seemed to take anything seriously. If any of these "heroes" ever went up against actual real life gladiators, none of them would last 60 seconds. The Doctore would never have tolerated the griping and bitchiness and the constant dismal failure of people he was trying in vain to train. For these contestants it was just one long joke, even during the challenges. You would think that pulling a bunch of rejects off the streets of London and throwing them back into life 2000 years ago would be an opportunity to actually give them an insight into life at that time, but when the whole process is nothing more than an excuse to just not go to work for a few weeks and act like it's one huge bro-fest at the local pub, the supposed entertainment starts to wear a little thin and you long for them to bring on the lions, the charioteers, or anything else that would give these sods a quick and painful death. It's not surprising that the series was cancelled after only one season, with testosterone constantly running rampant and foul mouthed "ladies" clawing at each other and the equally brain-dead public largely having a more romantic view of Rome, it was a forgone conclusion that this series would be dead quicker than a Christian in the time of Nero. Lets hope this show never gets a revival.
Bromans is a show where 8 couples are transported back in time to live as Romans lived; the guys as gladiators and their girlfriends as dutiful handmaidens and servants to their fighting men. It's a great concept very poorly executed and labelled as reality TV. All 16 contestants don't appear to have a single brain cell among them and whether or not it's staged for the cameras, none of them seem to have any knowledge of Rome and all they know of Caesar is a salad. I'm sure that most, if not all of these contestants, wouldn't be able to even locate Rome on a map. After every challenge, characters playing a Dominus and a Doctore, meet with the Emperor to discuss which contestant is to be banished. Once they are banished they are stripped of their toga and they leave.
In the first episode we're introduced to the would be gladiators and they are advised that as gladiators, they are now considered slaves and they are to act as such, so they are stripped naked and marched into a small coliseum, there they are shackled and made to stand there while their women are brought in wearing gold bikinis to laugh at them before they are given their first test; to find bundles of clothing buried in the ground and clothe their men. Apparently viewers were horrified when one girl ends up with a few scratches from wrestling with another girl when a bag of clothes is found. I still can't work out what we're supposed to be shocked about, if getting scratched was the worst thing a Roman ever faced, it would never have become a world power.
Over the next few weeks we are then subjected to these low-foreheaded tattooed British idiots as they are put through challenge after challenge while the women get to laze around largely doing nothing except bitch and whinge whenever they have to do what Roman women used to do, like wash clothes and crush grapes and be subservient to men. Ironically if any of these women acted and spoke like these tramps do during Roman times, they'd think twice before ever opening their mouths again. The so called gladiators seem to excel in 2 things, making excuses on why they lost a challenge and hurling insults at one another.
However I can look past all the stupidity and faux gladiatorial matches, I can even look past all the half-witted attempts to showcase what actual Roman life was like, but what really got to me was that none of these idiots seemed to take anything seriously. If any of these "heroes" ever went up against actual real life gladiators, none of them would last 60 seconds. The Doctore would never have tolerated the griping and bitchiness and the constant dismal failure of people he was trying in vain to train. For these contestants it was just one long joke, even during the challenges. You would think that pulling a bunch of rejects off the streets of London and throwing them back into life 2000 years ago would be an opportunity to actually give them an insight into life at that time, but when the whole process is nothing more than an excuse to just not go to work for a few weeks and act like it's one huge bro-fest at the local pub, the supposed entertainment starts to wear a little thin and you long for them to bring on the lions, the charioteers, or anything else that would give these sods a quick and painful death. It's not surprising that the series was cancelled after only one season, with testosterone constantly running rampant and foul mouthed "ladies" clawing at each other and the equally brain-dead public largely having a more romantic view of Rome, it was a forgone conclusion that this series would be dead quicker than a Christian in the time of Nero. Lets hope this show never gets a revival.
Simply Awesome!
cherispargo18 July 2018
Budget-version of Gladiator
tomdaly-174364 March 2018
What can I say about this show that hasn't been said before? Bromans is just basically Love Island, only more testosterone and set in Ancient Rome, or a budget-version of Ancient Rome. The guys are just a gang of Geordie Shore rejects, the girls are just vapid...honestly, it makes Love Island look like a sociological documentary!
I know gladiatorial battles were violent, but I think I'd rather watch a man get ripped apart by tigers and lions than this televisual monstrosity! Classics professors everywhere would be up in arms as these air-headed millennials engage in faux-gladiatorial battles that make Up! Pompeii look more like Gladiator.
To round this review off, historians have always debated what caused the Roman Empire to fall...but now, I think they've found the cause for the downfall of modern civilisation as we know it!
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