Starz kicks the Spartacus revival back into the pit

We do, at least, have to give House Of Ashur points for effort: In the grand scheme of TV revivals—which often seem content to simply reassemble an old cast with new writers and a slightly tweaked premise, then hope for the best—it had a genuine idea powering it. To wit: Original series creator Steven S. DeKnight conceived the series as an alternate universe story, in which fan favorite character Ashur (Nick E. Tarabay) did not get himself killed during the original show’s second season, but instead managed to kill Spartacus himself, leading to a whole series of “What if?” adventures as he decides to run his own gladiator school. This pseudo-revival did surprisingly well with critics, scoring a 91 percent “Fresh” rating from Rotten Tomatoes—although the fact that that metric was derived from all of 11 reviews speaks to a wider conceptual shrug to the idea of the once-buzzy swords-and-sandals series, which ran on Starz with various seasonal names attached to it from 2010 to 2013, coming back.

News of House Of Ashur getting the lethal thumbs down was reported by Deadline on Friday; the report notes that Lionsgate Television will attempt to shop the series around, presumably in the hopes that someone’s absolutely desperate for a lightly-used Spartacus revival.