There are two reasons I never watch reality TV anymore. The first is that I am a massive sucker for reality TV editing and will get immediately sucked in. The second is that, about 10 years ago, contestants became self aware and worked out exactly how to play the editing game. About 30 seconds into Bromans, it became clear that both these things were still true when one of the Ladiators declared
"Back in the day, in ancient Roman times, they believed the Earth was flat and, yeah, I believe that."
This kid immediately became my favourite. But let's go through this beat by beat.
From the first line of the press release a couple of months ago, we knew that Bromans was going to be a very, very silly show that took a very tongue-in-cheek attitude to the ideas of accuracy and authenticity:
“The Romans gave us roads, viaducts and basic sanitation but ‘Bromans’ may prove to be their greatest legacy.”
And our introduction to the Bros, and to the character that is going to guide them through the world of Ancient Rome, suggests that it's going to be very silly indeed. The show is using the sets of Plebs, so they do look surprisingly authentic from the outside, and it has been populated with about 13 extras wearing sackcloth tunics and no shoes. The Bros enter in their half undone shirts and their salmon coloured shorts bellowing
"Ancient Rome is sick! Full of fit ladies and sick geezers."
The Bros are 97% muscle and regional accents. All of them have an accent: Welsh. Yorkshire, Essex, Unexpected Eton Plummy.
They are met by a guy in a kind of generic Roman outfit speaking with cut glass RP and introducing himself as "Dominus, the advisor the emperor." When I say generic Roman, he is wearing a long white t-shirt with a bit of red curtain draped over it and a gold diadem.
Dominus then recites some Latin very quickly, but I'm 75% sure it was Horace's/Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' (It is sweet and honourable to die for the fatherland), which is either a brilliant piece of ironic usage or, well I'm not sure. The first part of the set up is in place though: the Bros are oily dimwits, the Dominus (who is the voice of the viewer) is making fun of them.
And so he does, as he forces them all to strip naked and shackles them to the floor. We are maybe 4 minutes into the show and all the boys are nude.
Cut to the girls entering the set. The girls are mostly blonde hair extensions and excessive lip fillers. I'm a bit worried about the amount of filler in one of them. They are taken on a shopping trip where they all change out of their own bikinis and into matching gold lame bikinis and tiny white dresses and then are taken to see their nude boyfriends who are still shackled.
It will rapidly become clear that Bromans was made for men who want to look at oiled muscles and the reassure themselves about their sexuality by looking at slo-mo jiggling lady bits for a long time.
The Bros and Girlfriends (because why bother to define a woman by anything other than her relationship to a man) are now together in the 'colosseum'. I thought maybe they'd call it at amphitheatre but I think we're going to have to learn to live with the fact that people don't know that the colosseum is just one specific amphitheatre, which, fyi, means double theatre as a normal theatre is just the semi-circle shaped ones. The colosseum is called the colosseum because it was built on the site of Nero's colossal statue of himself. Don't say you never learn anything from me.
It's at this point that I get fully sucked into this show because one of the girls, I didn't catch which but it might have been Jade, instantly shouted "babe, you look fit!" at her bf, an act of support that I found unbearably charming. We then got a VT of Jade and her bf Jordan. Jordan is a bricklayer and is made of puppy levels of enthusiasm.Jade never stops gazing at Jordan. They're both adorable.
Back in the Colosseum, the girls have a task: they have to dig in the sand to find clothes for their Bros. But there are 8 Bros and only 6 sacks of clothes. The girls strip in slow-motion.
The next section has maybe 3 minutes of actual footage, stretched to nearly 10 by most of it being in slow motion. There are a lot of slo-mo close ups of women's bottoms jiggling and they fight in the sand. I'm pretty sure I saw some labia. It is absolutely pornographic and more than a little uncomfortable to be honest. If you're going to watch this on ITV Player, skip it. You'll know who loses because they (Richard and Tian) get put in tiny tiny tiny jockstraps, while the other Bros get skirts. There's some cock closeups but not in slow-mo. If they'd put a slo-mo man butt jiggle here, I'd maybe have forgiven the previous bit.
With everyone now having at least a small bit of cloth covering their genitals, we skip off the the villa in which the couples will be living. It is tiny. The pool is about the size of a double bed. They all have to sleep in the same room. It is very clear that the producers were not allowed to change much about the Plebs set, but they've done their best and the kids are thrilled. They all hug. They're cute as buttons.
They have a dinner of sausages, which the narrator emphasises is not authentic Roman cuisine. There's a strange balance between semi-authenticity and deliberate anachronism, which they actively call attention to, that I quite enjoy. There is absolutely no guile or pretence in Bromans. It is, as the wee posh Soft Boy Tom says
Bums and boobs and bants and sex!
Admittedly, he says it in such a way that suggests he's incredibly uncomfortable with all those things, but he's alone in that. Everyone else, from the production crew to the extras, are here for sexy people in the sunshine with an inexplicable Roman theme.
The best is yet to come though: There's a Roman nightclub. It's also called the Colosseum. In a moment of pure joy, Brandon, who is a professional Instagram influencer, declares with absolutely unmitigated delight "We don't even need to pay for the drinks! It's ALL INCLUSIVE!"
Jordan is even happier. As his gf grinds on him, he sighs, "This is the best night of my life".
I'd worry about a boy who thinks the best night of his life is hanging out with 14 strangers in an otherwise empty pretend nightclub on a TV set but I suspect that Jordan thinks that every night is the best night of his life. Jordan is unapolagetically thrilled by existence itself. I want to be him.
Next morning, the Bros are introduced to their Doctore, called Doctore, played by David McIntosh. David McIntosh is massive, is doing a weird accent on and off, appears to have taken a ton of speed judging by his face chewing, and is wearing eyeliner. He once drove a van full of dead badgers into a bus stop. This makes his criticisms of the Bros in the task very funny.
He's also got VERY 2017 cold shoulder armour. You'd find this in ASOS.
The task is for the couples to work together to load a cart full of rocks, which the Bros will drag America's Strongest Man-style up an alley. The final load will be the Bros pulling their girlfriends.
The task is carnage. The Welsh couple go first and Richard falls over. Within seconds, he;s bleeding and everyone is sobbing while his girlfriend Sophii holds him and the rest of the group commiserate. I am fully sucked in. I am feeling feelings. I want to hug everyone.
Next, posh Soft Boy Tom, who is a semi-professional rubgy player, does a series of horse noises and shouts "I AM A STALLION! I FANCY YOU!" at his musical theatre student Rhiannon in the plummiest voice you ever heard. I don't know whether I want to hug him or drown him. They both look like 14 year olds who have snuck into a nightclub.
The rest are kinda skimmed over because we spent all that time on the slo-mo jiggling. All the couples are just adorably loving and supportive of each other though. By this point, 45 minutes in, my heart, which is squishy as hell at the best of times, had completely melted and I want them all to win. Even the one that was described by one of his rivals as "toddler Joey Essex". I've forgotten his real name. I'm only calling him that.
At the end of the task, the two teams with the slowest times are put up for elimination. We get a kind of strange council scene where the Dominus, acting his little socks off, and Doctore, also acting but aware its not his forte, present their overview of the teams to a mysterious Emperor. We never see the Emperor. I assume we are saving that reveal for the final. This is entirely pointless. I love it.
Finally, there is an elimination. The bottom two are Toddler Joey Essex and Welsh Richard. Each gives a short speech to the rest of the gang outlining why they think they should be allowed to stay. This is a waste of their time becuase the couples are immediately and ruthlessly tactical. They decide that Toddler Joey Essex, who consists of 75% hairspray, is less of a physical threat that Welsh Richard, who is massive and is 80% tattoos and choose to keep Toddler Joey Essex.
Welsh Richard and Sophii are removed from Rome. To symbolise this, Dominus sets fire to a banner with Richard's face on it. Richard was my favourite so I am very sad at this point and have now been forced to take against Toddler Joey Essex.
And that's the end.
As far as I can tell, the show was developed as a way to get the most use out of the Plebs sets and show flesh. It is willfully and deliberately refusing to engage with any notion of accuracy and gives only a wee wink to the idea of authenticity. This is its saving grace really: if it went po-faced and accurate, it would be tedious; it it didn't acknowedge that the Romans were a real people, it would be confusing. By giving sly winks to the audience in the narration, it allowed me to forgive it.
It's other saving grace is that the couples are all charming and adorable. They are all very young, in their early 20s, but they all seem to love each other and have all entered this being supportive and kind to the other couples. In the girls's task, one girl got her hair caught in a bag and got dragged by it. Immediately afterwards, the other girls publically apologised. They hug, they cheer for each other. They know literally nothing about Ancient Rome, but hardly anyone does, and they're nice people. That niceness is what sucked me in in the end.
