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Spartacus: Vengeance Premiere Doubles Numbers of Series Premiere

Published:January 31, 2012

Spartacus ratingsAfter being off the air for nearly two years (if you don’t count the six episode prequel) Spartacus roared back to the the small screen on Friday night.

With Liam McIntyre taking over for the late Andy Whitfield, the first episode of Spartacus: Vengeance drew a 0.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 1.39 million viewers at 10pm.

That was double what the series premiere drew back in 2010 (a 0.3 rating with 0.66 million). If Starz had any doubts about their decision to continue with the series, those fears have now been put to rest.

Here’s the press release from Starz, which incorporates replay numbers:

Starz “Spartacus: Vengeance” Returns with 2.7 Million Overall Weekend Viewers
4 Million+ Total Viewers To-Date with Record Online and On-Demand Sampling

The first episode of “Spartacus: Vengeance” debuted on STARZ to an audience of nearly 2.7 million P2+ viewers across four weekend telecasts the weekend of January 27. (**Late reporting of an additional Sunday night airing was not available at time of release).

Focusing specifically on Friday night performance, “Spartacus: Vengeance” produced a record total of 2.1 million viewers (1.39M viewers for Friday at 10PM (et/pt) and 677K for the 11PM (et/pt) repeat, which was a 10% increase over the “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” prequel Friday night premiere (1.9 million viewers combined for Friday premiere 10PM and 11PM repeat).

Record multi-platform sampling interest in the first episode of “Spartacus: Vengeance” achieved more than 1.4 million on-demand and online views to-date, bringing the preliminary weekend total past the 4 million viewer mark.

* Source: Nielsen Fast National Ratings

What do you think? Did you watch the Spartacus: Vengeance premiere? What do you think of Liam McIntyre in the lead role?

 

Image courtesy Showtime.

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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

paul February 4, 2012 at 2:49 pm

No one should blame Liam for not being Andy (who can be succeeded but not “replaced”). But another poster here is right to say that Liam looks “small.” Andy looked the part of a hero who could lead a slave rebellion. Part of this was physical. He had the musculature of someone who could take on any comers. Not so with Liam. Couldn’t the producers have sprung for a personal trainer? He has virtually no bulk and near-zero definition. The manager at my local WalMart is in better shape.

Andy also had a greater expressive range as an actor, vocally and facially. In that respect, Liam has a long way to go.

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rick February 1, 2012 at 12:33 pm

I liked the previous season. This episode was poor in most aspects- acting, visuals, production quality, … It felt more like a cheap knockoff made by a completely new crew.

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Grandizer February 1, 2012 at 10:59 am

I love the show, but HATE the audio. There is so much volume changing in the actors talking from one moment to the next as to be unbelievably stupid that they don’t subtext the whispers.
Seriously, one second they are showing the arena battle with the crowd noise and a second later you have whispering in Lucretia’s ear. Plain bad job of audio editing.
And Cablevision does not allow you to turn on subtitles with the HD box, although I think that may be more a function of the HDMI standard.

Liam is a lot smaller in build then Andy though, a bit similar in facial features, but his voice did not project as well as Andy’s did. That might just have been Andy’s native accent though.

The new brother and sister duo I have no idea about, much of their conversation was not audible to me, and when I had to rewind and turn the volume up, the conversation was still near impossible to hear.

I am going to have to DL off the web the episodes and find one that has subtitles.

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Roy January 31, 2012 at 3:38 pm

I think that Liam McIntyre did OK. It is hard to replace a talented actor like Andy Whitfield who was so passionate in playing the role of Spartacus. Spartacus Vengeance is still a great show with excellent writing and acting from the others who had been there since Blood and Sand. Liam McIntyre will have to earn his place in the brotherhood as Andy did in the beginning. I have faith that he will do great things and make Spartacus his own.

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