Two Familiar Faces Clash in the 'Those About To Die' Trailer

It really was just a matter of time before streaming TV took the British-ish fantasy genre, hyper-fueled by Game of Thrones' smashing success, to the logical endpoint and circled back to the original British-accented fantasy trope that once dominated the big-budget landscape in feature films: the Sword-and-Sandal epic. Once defined by massive budget busters without a single stitch of CGI like Ben-Hur and Cleopatra, these films have been few and far between since Gladiator. But Peacock's Those About To Die is betting that there's still an audience for such things, and that with an influx of subscribers coming for the Olympic Games, now is the time to try it.

Peacock has weighted the odds in Those About To Die's favor not only by releasing the first episode ten days before the Olympics opening ceremony but with a cast full of recognizable faces. The series is headlined by the great Sir Anthony Hopkins, who pulls out his best Sir Laurence Olivier from Spartacus. (Fun fact! Hopkins did the overdubbing for late Olivier's lines in the 1990s restoration of the 1960s classic.)

But for those who might not appreciate their Sword-and-Sandal history, the series has a more recent pairing of actors for fans of the British-ish fantasy to appreciate, by pitting Iwan Rheon against Rupert Penry-Jones as high-born and low-born citizens fighting for power in Rome via the games.