Ultimately, when his cancer returned, Whitfield left “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,’’ and Australian actor Liam McIntyre was cast as Spartacus with Whitfield’s blessing. Season 2 will begin filming this spring. But here’s the place-holding prequel, beginning tonight at 10, to keep us titillated, grossed out, and enthralled in the meantime. But for the absence of Whitfield and his Spartacus, “Gods of the Arena’’ could easily pass for “Blood and Sand.’’ In other words, the prequel is as campy as you could want it to be, with melodramatic overacting, anarchic violence, and cheesy sex scenes aplenty.
The story follows the ascent of John Hannah’s Batiatus in the gladiator business. Spartacus slew Batiatus at the end of Season 1 of “Blood and Sand,’’ but here he is looking younger and hungrier as he and wife, Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), work to make the House of Batiatus into a premier gladiator factory. Batiatus and Lucretia own a fabulous heathen of a fighter named Gannicus (Dustin Clare) who can’t seem to lose — even blindfolded. He is a temperamental, vain rock star of a gladiator who parties all night with comely slaves; he doesn’t seem to have the noble soul of Spartacus. But he’s a winner, and worth the trouble for his owners.
I was delighted to see Jaime Murray in the cast of “Gods of the Arena,’’ as Gaia, a recently widowed friend of Lucretia who is all about greed and good times. Murray was fantastically pathological on “Dexter’’ as Lila in Season 2, and she was cool fire as a regular on the British con-artist series “Hustle.’’ Here she is the queen of bad influences, drawing Lucretia into an opium haze, adulterous lesbian sex, and, no doubt, more as the season unfolds. I see a three-way with Batiatus in their future.
The “300’’-esque fight scenes are riveting, occupying that visual place where artsy imagery meets video-game graphics. The speed-ups, the slow-downs, the gracefully splattering blood, the tearing of flesh, the sounds of clinking swords — they’re both hypnotic and repulsive. And the sex scenes are soft-porny and tinted with golden candlelight — they made me laugh out loud, to be honest. But that’s OK; the “Spartacus’’ shows are intentionally over the top and absurd, guilty pleasures if you’re inclined to feel guilty about watching hedonistic fluff. They’re about people as animals in a primitive world where conscience and restraint are rare — or, at least, more rare than they are today.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.
