YMMV / Barbarians Rising

• Awesome Music: Befitting a documentary about the Roman Empire, the show's theme song is an epic orchestral rock number.
• Critical Dissonance:
  • Common people often rate positively the show for its good cast, acting and sequences, while critics and history buffs tend to hate it for presenting an incredibly slanted and unfaithful version of the events it covers.
    IMDB reviewer: "Please, do not call this history. This is just a epic-romantic fictional drama. The fight of good against evil. An idealistic quest for freedom... Nothing to do with real history. Not only they get all the facts mixed up, when not entirely wrong, the worst is the "analysis" by the "experts". They really sound like 7-year-olds talking about the last Disney cartoon. They do not understand the politics at all, how an empire is built. I gave it 6 for the effort and, because as a work of fiction, it deserves some recognition."
  • Ironically, some critics have also been known to mildly praise the show in comparison with The History Channel's recent lineups for actually being a historical documentary.
• Narm:
  • If Jesse Jackson as a guest in an ancient history show is not enough to kill all of its seriousness, his bizarre claims that Carthage (historically, a Semitic colony in a Berber land) was somehow a bulwark of black culture (whatever that is) just sell it, adding to the Barca family being accordingly portrayed by black actors in the show. Good thing the documentary was released two years before Black Panther (2018), as it is unlikely the producers would have resisted the temptation to claim that Carthage was the real life version of Wakanda.
  • For a Spanish or Portuguese viewer, the scenes set in ancient Hispania can be hilarious to watch for how obviously they are not filmed in the Iberian Peninsula or any country with even a vaguely similar climate. The dark, gloomy forests seen in the Battle of Tribola are literally the opposite to how the real place should look.
• Narm Charm: The show is unapologetically partial in its celebration of Rome's enemies, often twisting historical facts and even making stuff up in order to build an anti-Roman narrative, but its sheer enthusiasm is infectious and its cast makes it quite watchable in general.

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