Redundant and unnecessary.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

One of the greatest things about this obscure and lengthy German/Italian TV video is that it contains none of the over-famous and over-paid Hollywood faces that plague us in the usual video-store fare. Another huge advantage is that, being set in Ancient Rome, it will never feature a hideous American gas-guzzling automobile, neither will characters use a telephone or wear mass-produced off-the-peg clothing. It also eschews those tedious set-pieces with a "cast of thousands" that the Hollywood egomaniacs feel obliged to deliver. Instead, it is a love story between two young people raised in rustic simplicity in a country villa. Their love is interrupted by fate, and the rest is 90 minutes of turmoil as Claudius the healthy peasant boy becomes Nero the tortured idealist who in despair ultimately dies by his own hand.I gather from other comments that the story has little historical accuracy, but neither did Ben Hur nor The Ten Commandments. Hans Matheson as Nero makes a decent job of a difficult role. He transitions from simple country boy to deranged paladin effectively enough considering the complications of episodic scripting and Italian TV boss Berlusconi's feeble brain-power. When Poppea drugged him, I felt sorry: he would obviously never be the same again, and indeed, he did condemn the lover of his youth, Acte (popular German TV actress Rike Schmid), to death as a Christian, but more probably because she was taller than he. This is for fans of films set in Ancient Rome, who do not have PhDs in Roman history. As such it works fine: settle back for three hours of togas and treachery and take no notice of the self-appointed experts.

As a ravenous devourer of all films set in the ancient world, but especially the Roman ones, as soon as I found out this and "Augustus" are part of a larger programme, I had to uncover the remaining pieces to be filmed. As culled from the production company website, they are as follows:Miniseries completed: Augusto/Augustus and Nerone/Nero Miniseries in production: San Pietro/Saint Peter, Pompei/Pompeii, Costantino/Constantine and La Caduta dell'Impero/The fall of the empire.So it would appear that the series will not focus only on 'imperium' per se, that is emperors and all that. But instead, it will feature some historical events and important characters peripheral to Rome proper (in this case, St. Peter). Much as I don't like the Christian flicks, one cannot look at all Rome's history and shrug it off. But, for my part, I look forward to the Constantine piece. TThe man hasn't been 'filmed' much and I cannot locate the one that I know of on DVD anywhere.

OK, we all know that historical movies are full of inexactitudes, the list is so long, Troy was a disaster, and Brad Pitt acting was horrible, any movies done on Joan of arc was to laugh about, and so on and so on, so why review them pointing on how bad they are with respecting the real story? Sure I don't retain this movie as being Oscar material (then again I saw some winners worst than this movie), but it was entertaining, the set and costume were nice...The only shame was that it was entirely voiced over even for the English speaking actors, and I never get used to hear somebody familiar speak with another voice......

I cannot comprehend how this picture was allowed to be made. It is mostly, if not completely, inaccurate so much so that the main character does not even resemble how history has him look physically. This movie made me go on the internet and go through my books to make sure I remember Nero's personality correctly. For God's sake, I have a book that lists Nero as one of the most evil person's of the world and the movie made me feel bad for him. I must say Aggrapina's character seemed close to my understanding of her, both physically and psychologically. Although, the actors all did a good job, the movie was terrible and I'm sure I will not watch any others made by this sorry team.