Left image from BBC’s Atlantis; right image from Xena: Warrior Princess.
A couple of years ago British television and computer screens were abuzz with the BBC’s own addition to the horde of classical adaptations and reinterpretations to make it onto the ‘little’ screen. If you have been living under a rock, or perhaps actually living, you might not yet have heard of Atlantis; the epic saga of Jason, born in 2013 only to find himself in the yet to be submerged city of Atlantis living in a flat-share with Pythagoras and Hercules (or Heracles) during some unspecified period of ancient Greek history all because his submarine accidently stumbled into what was presumable a wormhole in the fabric of time, and reality, under the sea.
This show took ancient philosophers and mythological heroes, however questionably heroic they may be represented, and blends them together against a factually uncomfortably backdrop. The abandoned facts need not be historical; no objections to the show have insinuated Jason and Hercules were genuine historical figures but that does not mean ancient writers have given us any less established (f variable) stories of their lives. As television screenwriter’s everywhere run in fear from the confines of the original tales offended historians and classicists have crawled back out of the woodwork to once again object on the behalf of antiquity.
Jean's Thoughts 