Plebs is back with a strong start to its second season with four hilarious episodes that keeps up with the impressive debut season. Just like its first season we get to experience modern problems in an older setting and get to watch young men’s trial and tribulations through learning to become proper adults.
For those of you who may not have experienced the pleasure of Plebs just yet, it involves a group of young twenty-somethings living in Ancient Rome, tackling things young men tackle at that age but in the ancient setting. Very similar to the hit show The Inbetweeners, Plebs depicts friends Marcus (Tom Rosenthal) and Stylax (Joel Fry) and their slave Grumio (Ryan Sampson) dealing with their failed attempts to pick up women, their many inadequacies, and general boyish antics you might see in the twentieth century. As you might expect, it’s left open to the odd bad joke, but more often than not Plebs capitalises on its unique setting to make you actually laugh out loud.
The only failing of this season is the occasional cringe moment of flat jokes. Although the slave character Grumio has his moments, his character is particularly unbelievable and, sadly, unfunny. Because his character is a slave, they make him painfully stupid to a point where the lines he says are irritating, and again, not really believable. Despite this shortcoming though, the character does have a strong episode in the fourth episode where he’s actually put in a more controlling position versus playing the part of the idiot. Hopefully the writers’ will see the comedic success of Grumio in this episode and give him the opportunity for a bit more high-brow (and actually funny) humour.
If you somehow aren’t entertained, hearing Cockney accents in togas should be enough to keep you watching for twenty three minutes. Plebs is one to watch and will undoubtedly end this season just as strongly, than it’s already side-splitting start.
